B chapter.indd - Charles Babbage Institute - University of Minnesota

Erwin Tomash Library
Booth, Andrew Donald Booth, Andrew Donald
of programming, the use of subroutines and some
examples such as X-ray crystal structure analysis—a
subject in which the Booths had previous experience.
This book, which has the feel of being written by someone
who actually knows the material very well and can
explain it in a way that is easily understood, was a success
in Britain but, while known and appreciated by some in
America, did not receive the same acknowledgement
here.
Illustrations available:
Title page
A.P.E.(R)C. machine
Disk/pin mechanical memory
A.P.E.(R)C. machine, B 204
Disk/pin mechanical memory, B 204
B 205
Booth, Andrew Donald (1918–) and Kathleen H. V.
Booth
Automatic digital calculators
Year: 1956
Place: London
Publisher: Butterworths Scientific Publications
Edition: 2nd
Language: English
Figures: 4 photographic plates
Binding: original cloth boards; with dust jacket
Pagination: pp. xii, 262
Size: 216x138 mm
This second edition has been extended by the new
discoveries of the Booths and others. Although the same
material is covered as in the first edition, there is, for
example, a more detailed treatment of magnetic core
memory.
A third edition (also in the collection) was published
in 1965 after the Booths had moved from Britain to
Canada. While they provided a major revision for this
later edition, it soon became clear that this book was not
appropriate for the middle of the 1960s. Some of the
material, for example, the mechanical memory and relay–
based circuits, was simply out-of-date, and readers were
in search of programming descriptions more applicable
to individual machines. The frontispiece was changed to
show a new M3 computer that the Booths had developed
at the University of Saskatchewan.
Illustrations available:
Title page
B206.
Booth, Andrew Donald (1918–) and Kathleen H.V.
Britten
Principles and progress in the construction of highspeed
digital computers. In Quarterly Journal of
Mechanics and Applied Mathematics, Vol. II, Pt 2, June
1949.
Year: 1949
Place: Oxford
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Binding: original paper wrappers
Pagination: pp. 182–197
Collation: K–R 8
Size: 233x155 mm
At this time Kathleen Britten was an assistant to A. D.
Booth at Birkbeck College and was shortly to become
Mrs. Booth.
This is a very early discussion of the principles of the
stored program computer as they were understood in
1947, when the paper was first written. After a brief
discussion of digital versus analog computers, the basic
structure of the stored program computer is explained.
The paper finishes with a discussion of the state of
computer projects in the United States (A. D. Booth
having just returned from a trip there), including those
of Aiken’s Mark II, the Bell Model V, the EDVAC and
von Neumann’s IAS machine. Several noteworthy items
appear in this paper, including the distinction between
175