24 Nov
2004
24 Nov
'04
5:59 a.m.
On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 11:33 -0800, Tom Jennings wrote:
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
Now it would be interesting to know if it was fully transistorised for
the logic (core memory still, no doubt! :)
Both our big Marconi TAC and the Elliott 803 are transistorised machines
and date from circa 1959 - it'd be interesting to know what machines
using transistors were in use before then.
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
That's the same pic everyone seems to have :)
You've got some interesting other stuff on there, though.
I know we've got various Pegasus, Deuce and Leo documentation at the
museum, but I've not seen anything of the Mercury so it's something of
an unknown to me!
cheers
Jules
