Skip to content
◈ALB Atlas

Manchester Mark 1 Lost

Manchester Mark 1
KindMachine
Introduced1949
Discontinued1950
StatusLost
ManufacturerWilliams & Kilburn / Ferranti
ClassEarly computer
PlatformWilliams tube
Sourceen.wikipedia.org ↗

The Baby's production-grade sibling — full index registers, drum backing store — and the direct parent of the Ferranti Mark 1, the first commercialized computer.

Created by Frederic Calland Williams Tom Kilburn

The Mark 1 ran April 1949 — the Baby's architecture plus B-lines (index registers), a magnetic drum store, and a proper instruction set. Alan Turing wrote its input routines and much of its programming manual while at Manchester.

Ferranti's commercial version — the Ferranti Mark 1, delivered February 1951 — was the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer, beating UNIVAC to delivery by months. Nine were sold.

→ Read the full article on the ALB Wiki

Sources

  1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Mark_1