24 Nov
2004
24 Nov
'04
5:33 a.m.
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
Does anyone have any info lurking online about the
Ferranti Mercury
(specs, what roles the handful of machines that were made took on etc.)?
The chap we got the BeBox, Lisa etc. from has an original programming
manual for one (although nowhere does it say Ferranti - just 'Mercury')
and it'd be nice to give him a bit more info about the machine itself.
Holy crapola, a lot of the best software development in the
world was done on Ferranti machines. English computers from
that era (50's) had index regs, stacks and subroutine support
back when the Americans were still trying to put square wheels
on their wagons.
The Mercurys (Mercuries?) were late 50's? developed
versions of the Manchester thread machines. It had a fancy
autocode. Transistorized I assume.
I don't think I have any hardware descriptions of it, and it
would take me some time to look at, but I do have this picture
http://wps.com/archives/Ivall/Ferranti-Mercury-computer.jpg
and others at that base URL.
