5 Apr
2002
5 Apr
'02
6:57 a.m.
Stan Barr wrote:
It wouldn't surprise me. Manchester University were early pioneers in
semiconducer applications. Ferranti were closely associated with them,
and Ferranti were heavily involved in military and aviation work.
See: http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/biganalog.html
I found that link the other day, and I'm trying to figure out how the
machine worked. I'm thinking the "synthetic gimbals" are used to
generate a resultant (hydraulic pressure, it looks like) from
aerodynamic forces on wings and control surfaces simulated by multiple
hydraulic circuits. The electronics would basically be mediating
controls and switchgear for the pumps, and not do any computation
proper, or at least not arithmetical computation. I could be wrong, in
fact I could be way off base, and I welcome correction, but this is
actually appears to be a mechanical, or hydraulic, analog computer.
Still very impressive.
Ferranti were limited to convential alloy drift
germanium transistors as
they couldn't persuade anyone to manufacture ones designed for digital
use. The Atlas used OC170s, which were designed for radio use, running
at 10MHz IIRC. Floating point multiply in 4.97 microseconds which was
pretty quick at the time!
I dismantled a Ferranti board circa 1962/3 to recover the transistors...
wish I'd kept the board now ;-(
Somewhere around here I have the remains of a GE intercom kit from that
era (62/63) with some of their first general purpose (I think) germanium
transistors.
jbdigriz