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In 1947, Maston Beard and Trevor Pearcey led a research group at the CSIR (CSIRO as we know it today) Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney, Australia, to design and build an electronic computer.
Available technology at the time included the vacuum tube or "valve" technology and the pulse techniques developed for radar systems during World War II. This work in Australia paralleled, but was to a considerable extent independent of computer developments in Europe and the USA.
The CSIR Mk1 ran its first test programs in late 1949. The CSIR it was the fifth electronic stored program computer ever developed. It embodied many features novel at the time and was able to operate more than 1000 times faster than the best mechanical calculators. The machine was officially opened in 1951 and used to solve problems both for the Radiophysics Laboratory and outside organisations. The CSIR Mk 1 was decommissioned in 1955 and shipped to Melbourne.
On 14 June 1956 the Mk1 was recommissioned and renamed CSIRAC and the new Computation Laboratory at the University of Melbourne was officially opened. It was in Melbourne that CSIRAC came into its own as a general computing workhorse - from June 1956 to June 1964 over 700 computing projects were processed.
On its retirement in June 1964 CSIRAC was donated to the Museum of Victoria. Information courtesy of CSIRO |
