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| Vision and vacuum tubes Sir Maurice Wilkes, 96, one of the pioneers of British computing, strolls through the history the he helped createWalk round the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and sooner or later you'll hear a cry of recognition and someone will say: "I remember using one of those." It probably doesn't happen often to The Millionaire, a mechanical calculator that went into production in 1893, but Sir Maurice Wilkes spotted it, adding: "We used to have one in the lab. I hope it's still there."In this case, "the lab" was what became the Cambridge University Computer Lab, which Wilkes headed from 1945 until 1980. It was where he built Edsac, one of the world's first electronic computers, using sound beams traversing baths of mercury for the memory units. Edsac (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) first ran in May 1949, so this year a dinner was held to celebrate its 60th birthday. And, of course, to celebrate Wilkes himself, who is a bright, sharp 96 years of age, and has seen most of the history of computing at first hand.How sharp? On seeing the museum's air traffic control display, which fascinates many visitors, he immediately asks: "Where's the radar?" Ah, well, there isn't one. The displays are running real radar sequences but they're recorded. Wilkes, the consummate hardware guy, doesn't just see the screen, he looks to see how the whole system fits together.Ham but no chipsOne of the reasons Wilkes paid his first visit to the museum last week was to see the valve-based Witch computer (Technology, 9 September 2009), which is currently being restored. His tour also took in the Colossus second world war code-breaking computer being built from scratch by Tony Sale and his team, and he asked to visit the radio hut. "I used to be a ham," he says.Wilkes said he'd heard about the Witch – which was renamed during its time at the Wolverhampton College of Technology – when it was being built at Harwell, the atomic energy research lab, in 1951, and he'd talked to its three designers, who are still alive. "At the time, it wasn't terribly interesting, technically, but it turned out to be very reliable, and it did exactly what Harwell wanted," he says now. "It's earned its keep, that machine."Wilkes's Edsac and Edsac 2 computers were more innovative, but they were also designed for practical purposes, such as calculations for Cambridge University's researchers, some of whom were doing Nobel Prize-winning work. "We said prayers for reliability, for reliable answers," he says. "We never tried with the Edsac to exploit to the full the technology of the time, because even a slow electronic computer would be so fast [in comparison to hand-turned mechanical calculators]. You don't want to take a bigger jump than you need."Edsac was not just a workhorse, it gave rise to the world's first commercial computer: it was the basis for the design of Leo (Lyons Electronic Office), which ran its first business application in 1951. Leo was so successful in helping to manage the operations of the J Lyons catering empire that the company set up Leo Computers to sell versions to other businesses."We had vision," says Wilkes. "We saw computers as becoming important in the world, not just for mechanical calculations, but for business. But all we had was vacuum tubes! We couldn't possibly have had any premonition of transistors and integrated circuits, and that's what's made the difference. Integrated circuits have given us speed and low cost and so on, but the central thing is reliability. Even if you don't use them very often, they still work."Like many people who catch the wave of an emerging technology, Wilkes says: "I was very lucky, in coming along at just the right time, and being in the right place."This is undoubtedly true. Wilkes had the luck to read a copy of John von Neumann's First Draft of a Report on the Edvac, a planned US computer based on the stored program concept. Wilkes recognised immediately that this was the way the future would develop (computers became known as "von Neumann machines"). He then had the luck to be invited to the series of lectures on "Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers". These were held in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania, where America's giant Eniac computer had been built during the war.Abnormal timesWilkes could meet some of the American pioneers, including Howard Aiken at Harvard, and John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, who developed Eniac. He thus become one of the relatively few people who had some idea how to build a real computer, even though doing it was still a huge challenge given the technology available at the time.Wilkes also had the luck to be running the Cambridge University lab, "so I didn't have to ask anybody 'Could I build a computer, please?' I didn't have to put in any proposal. I didn't have to arrange any budget. I was in charge and I could go ahead. The times were extremely abnormal," he wrote in a paper for the Computer Conservation Society.Of course, many other people were in similar or even luckier positions, and achieved little compared with Wilkes. Being the right man at the right time wasn't luck.Wilkes's brief tour, conducted by museum director Kevin Murrell, started with early valve-based computers, and ended with a sandwich and a glass of red wine. Along the way, Wilkes chatted with Tony Sale about some of the details of Colossus. He stopped to look at various DEC minicomputers – he worked for DEC in the US after he retired from Cambridge – and some of the 1980s British micros, many of which were developed in Cambridge. Now he's ready to leave, he says he's enjoyed every minute of his visit, and observes that "progress now goes a lot faster than it used to"."So what are you looking forward to now?" I ask him."You can't see into the future, it's one of the laws of nature," he says, grinning. "If you'd asked me that half an hour ago, I'd have said 'My lunch'!"ComputingPeople in sciencePhysicsJack Schofieldguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Beauty is in the ear of feathered listener Big birds may be the loudest, but their songs are unlikely to have the complexity of their more petite feathered friends, according to new research. abc.net.au |
Sydney's latest hostel has fabulous harbour views Sydney's new YHA has budget rooms with harbour views in the historic Rocks district – and it comes with its very own archaeological digThe meaning of life, as Australian playwright David Williamson once wrote, is never debated in Sydney because we all know what it is: "Getting yourself a water frontage." Yet one of the quirks of the real estate-obsessed city is that some of the best views of the Opera House and Sydney harbour belong to the helplessly poor. Flanking the Harbour Bridge, among the billionaires' eyries and five-star hotels, are public housing towers with the best views money cannot buy. At their feet remain ancient terrace houses for welfare recipients.And now, adding to this robust blend, is a spanking new YHA, which opened its doors just weeks ago, close to the Park Hyatt, the city's priciest hotel. For minimal cost, guests can rub their eyes in the morning to a view of the harbour, the Opera House, the Bridge, and Fort Denison. They can have a barbecue on the rooftop and play a part (albeit briefly) in the quest for which, Williamson wrote, locals "devote a lifetime". Like the housing department's clients, hostel guests can be very poor and feel rich.We can thank history for this combination of architecture: the one-time clustering of the poor in the heart of the city, the supposedly unsanitary effects of living by water, and beyond that, Sydney's convict origins. The regeneration and gentrification of the Rocks area – the historic centre within a stroll of the harbour and Circular Quay – with high-end shops, galleries, restaurants and new residential developments, has not wiped out the past. Rather it has combined with it, layering the different eras within the square half-kilometre that was the Europe0an settlement's first home.Even if it were a simple building on its own foundations, the YHA hostel would be the latest representative of this egalitarian mix. But that's just the start of the story. The hostel is built on a unique plot of land; the real interest here lies not so much out in the views as down in the dirt. For most of the 20th century, the angular block on which the hostel stands was occupied by light industry. Workers on the railways and Sydney Harbour Bridge used the site until it was buried under bitumen for a bus depot and, from the 1960s, a public car park.In 1994, the New South Wales government decided to redevelop the site but not before investigating what colonial relics might lie beneath. Soon archaeologists discovered that the bitumen had been a perfect preservative for the pre-1900 relics.It was known that workers' cottages and a pub, the Plymouth Inn, later called the Australian, had been demolished in the early 20th century, officially a response to deaths from bubonic plague but more likely a government land grab.The archaeological dig recovered more than a million artefacts over the next 15 years, with the earliest remains from the house of first fleet convict George Legg and his wife Ann Armsden. Records showed they had arrived on the Lady Juliana, the "floating brothel", before building there in 1795.The spade work also revealed the foundations of a slaughterhouse owned by George Cribb, a butcher and bigamist. Cribb's well, poisoned by run-off from the abattoir, became a dump for objects including an alcohol still, probably thrown into the well during a government inspection.The Aussie Time Team discovered cauldrons from the site of Robert Berry's bakery, helping historians flesh out images of communal Sunday dinners when residents brought their meat to be cooked at the baker's fire. There were also earlier foundations of a house built in 1807 by Richard Byrne, an Irish rebel transported after the Vinegar Hill convict uprising, who eventually settled down to become one of the colony's leading stonemasons.The items recovered are one thing – crop seeds, dead pets and fine china – but the stories are another, and often tragic. As well as plague deaths, records show local families were decimated by smallpox. It is a site of some haunting. At its peak in the late 1800s, there were some 300 residents crammed into more than 30 cottages. At its centre, the Australian Hotel – now rebuilt down the road – established its claim to being the pub with the longest continually-held license in the country.The hostel has 106 rooms for up to 354 occupants, but although the population echoes the past, the architectural principles are somewhat different. The rooms – all en suites and many with harbour views – are spacious and well-appointed, and the common areas have all the usual facilities. But what distinguishes this structure is its being raised from the ground on posts that take up a small portion of the fragile site. In two wings, it sits above and around the archeological dig. Each wing has an atrium, with three stories of guest rooms surrounding the big internal courtyards. So while the windows face outwards, when you exit your room you are in a corridor looking down into the wells, cesspits and foundations of yesteryear.Historic photographs and prints on each floor show aspects of the past, there is an education centre on site, and one-hour tours can be arranged with expert guides. Attractive two-storey screens have been erected to duplicate the street frontage from the 19th century. Local history is supplemented in the Susannah Place Museum across the road and the Rocks Discovery Museum five minutes' walk away. The dig is ongoing, and there will be days when guests return to their hostel after a day tramping around museums only to find archaeologists on their hands and knees rustling up the stuff that will fill those very same museum shelves.A Brit coming to Sydney for the history may be like a Sydneysider travelling to Skegness for the beaches, but the counter-intuitiveness of the idea is rewarded by a unique hostel experience and inexpensive access to one of the richest (in every sense) and most essential cogs in a Sydney visit.When I stayed at the hostel it had only been open for a few weeks, and bookings were still relatively light. I don't expect this to remain the case for long.• Sydney Harbour YHA (0061 28272 0900, yha.com.au) has doubles from £66 per night (room only) and shared rooms from £23pp. Family rooms have TVs and there is a guest kitchen, laundry, dining room, internet and WiFi, coffee bar, and bike storage. Qantas (0845 7747 767, qantas.com) has return flights to Sydney from £1,056 including tax (£814 from April). For more information: australia.com.SydneyBudget travelHostelsHotelsAustralasiaGap year travelArchaeologyBeach holidaysguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Future uncertain for stuck Mars rover Spirit has always been the unluckier of NASA's twin Mars rovers. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
4-legged animals emerged earlier than thought LONDON (AP) -- The water-dwelling ancestors of modern-day mammals, reptiles and birds emerged onto land millions of years earlier than previously believed, researchers reported.... hosted.ap.org |