Did anyone see Clarkson last Thursday on Beeb 2? All about computers?
Having spent all my working life in the Computer industry, I was looking forward to it. He started well, with good insight of Babbage and the Difference Engine, then spent perhaps rather too long at Bletchley Park on code cracking machines (which were not true computers - more like electronic calculators). The action then moved immediately to the United States and the birth of modern computing.
He missed out what is IMHO the most important step in the development of the modern computer - the work done by Alan Turing, Kilburn, and Williamson and the brilliant team at Manchester University just after WW2 - mainly drawn from the brilliant scientists and technicians who had worked at Bletchley during the war.
This team constructed the world's very first stored program electronic computer - the 'Manchester Mk 1', or 'Baby', using cathode ray storage devices (Williamson Kilburn Tubes - licenced to IBM for use in their early computers). This is the first computer that actually works in the same way that modern general-purpose computers work using an internally stored interactive program rather than a static ‘pegboard’ or ‘program paper tape’ - it truly is the 'Baby' from which the modern computer industry grew. The British Computer Society have built a working replica of 'Baby', which can be seen at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. All electronic ‘brains’ prior to ‘Baby’ were task-dedicated by their fixed programs and were little more than purpose-built calculators.
When Williamson was invited to America by IBM in the early '50s, he noted that all around the IBM comlex in NY, on desks, doors etc was embazoned the word 'THINK!'
He gave a talk to assmbled IBMers about the 'Baby', and when asked how two men and a dog in Manchester England had managed to build a stored program computer while the likes of mighty IBM hadn't yet managed it he said:
"Well, we invented this storage device, then without THINKING about it we went ahead and built a computer around it to test it".
No IBM bosses were in the room, so it brought the house down
Aerbabe
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Clarkson has been referred to as "thinking woman's crumpet". Thing is, if you think about it too much, you realise whoever said that was wrong. He can be very funny though and I will be watching on Thursday.
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Aplogies if you knew this, Aerbabe (I'm an old fart so I was around back then), but it's a derivation of the 1960s term applied to Joan Bakewell - the 'thinking man's crumpet'.
Joan presented cerebral programs on BBC2, and was (still is) a very attractive lady. In those days, it was unusal for a woman to present a 'seriou' program. And attactive women on TV were usually expected to be a bit 'dumb'
SSD