18 Nov
2012
18 Nov
'12
11:43 a.m.
On 18 November 2012 19:14, Ed Spittles <ed.spittles at gmail.com> wrote:
On 16/11/2012 08:13, ben wrote:
Fantastic! I got in touch with Hector Parr, and he directed me to a
memoir he's written, and I now have a story: One Alan Wilkinson wrote
the book 'Computer Models' (a copy is now on its way to me) which is
most likely inspired by Brian Crank's article series. Alan was
teaching at Spennymoor Grammar School, and Hector was teaching at the
nearby Darlington Grammar School. Hector read Alan's book and
proceeded to get the Maths department and pupils to finance and build
a machine called DENICE, designed from scratch but with inspiration
On 11/16/2012 12:50 AM, Ed Spittles wrote:
How come this was never posted when you still could get germanium
transistors. :)
Ben.
There was a dire shortage of the very rare round tuits during that
period of my life, plus no access to a decent scanner. I actually wrote
my first program when I was 17 or 18 years old ( so 1971/2) on a
germanium transistor computer that had been built by my school derived
from the wireless world design. I was taught by the school Music
Teacher Hector Parr (http://www.hectorparr.freeuk.com/) who learnt to
program so he could calculate tables of Organ Pipe lengths to assist in
re-building the School pipe organ.
Dave Wade G4UGM
[conversation about Wireless World articles - a digital computer
built from reject germanium transistors]
Aha: here's an online version of a pamphlet reprinting that article
series, which gives credit to Brian Crank:
http://www.smrcc.org.uk/members/g4ugm/Manuals/wirelessworldcomputer.pdf
from the book.
Alan moved on to Teesside Polytechnic where he looked after an IBM
1620, which was made available to schoolchildren.
Hector later taught at Barnard Castle School, where he was
photographed in 1978 with a different computer:
http://ww2.durham.gov.uk/dre/pgDre.aspx?ID=DRE10345&PIC=Y
His memoir can be bought at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/hector-c-parr/music-maths-and-machines/paperback/p…
- there's a copy of this too on its way to me.
I now discover that Alan's book has been referenced at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_computer#cite_note-15
since Nov 2010.
(As for the reported cost of ?50 in the late 60's, I'm told a weekly
shop for a couple would be ?2 and a pint of rough cider would be 1/9d
(that is, 21 old pence, which were 240 to the pound.) According to
http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/,
the project would cost ?750 today, although those anecdotal prices
suggest rather more.)
I wrote up some notes on the WW machine here:
http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2333
Cheers
Ed