29 Nov
2012
29 Nov
'12
12:47 p.m.
Quick update:
On 18 November 2012 19:43, Ed Spittles <ed.spittles at gmail.com> 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.
I now think Alan started the whole thing, as his book was preceded by
articles in the magazine of the Association of Teachers of
Mathematics. His work would have inspired both Brian and Hector. Note
that Alan's book describes only a model - more or less an ALU -
whereas the others actually built computers.
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
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 again built a machine, this time called BRENDA (Barnardian
Electronic Numerical Demonstration Apparatus) - there are a couple of
Usenet posts by John Gilliver which tell us more about this.
I wrote up some notes on the WW machine here:
http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2333
Updated.
Cheers
Ed