Synergy User Manual and Tutorial. - THE CORE MEMORY

Synergy User Manual and Tutorial
tracks, i.e. 64 pages).
The machine’s peripheral instructions included a “read” from a 5-hole paper tape reader,
on which the code was normally entered, and “transfer” a page or track to or from a
Williams-Kilburn Tube page or pair of pages in storage. It also had a bank of 40 (8 by 5)
buttons that could be used to set the ones in a word in storage. There were also additional
switches that controlled the operations of the Mark I. The current storage contents could
be viewed on the machine’s display tube, shown on the left, which was organized into 8
columns of 5-bit groups. There was a direct correspondence between the symbols, each
made up of a 5-bit group, on the punched cards and the symbols on the display tube. The
government awarded the contract to mass-produce Mark I computers to Ferranti Ltd.,
which was the world’s first commercially available computer. Kilburn wrote the first
electronically stored computer program for the Mark I and also established the world’s
first university computer science department at Manchester. xxv
There were substantial improvements in computer programming and user interface design
as well as hardware architecture. John Mauchly (ENIAC and UNIVAC) developed Short
Order Code, which is thought to be the first high-level language in 1949, for the Binary
Automatic Computer (BINAC) computer. The BINAC, completed in 1949, was designed
for Northrop Aviation and was the first computer to use a magnetic tape. In 1951, David
Wheeler, Maurice Wilkes, and Stanley Gill introduced sub-programs and the “Wheeler
jump”, to implement them by moving to a different section of instructions and returning
to the original section after the sub-program is finished. Maurice Wilkes also originated
the concept of micro-programming, which is a technique for providing an orderly
approach to designing the control section of a computer system.
In 1951, while working with the UNIVAC I
mainframe, Betty Holberton (left) created the sortmerge
generator, which was predecessor to the
compiler and may have been the first useful
program that had the capability of generating other
programs for the UNIVAC I, and developed the C-
10 instruction code, which controlled the its core
functions. The C-10 instruction code allowed
UNIVAC to be controlled by a control console
(keyboard) commands instead of switches, dials and
wires, which made the system much more useful
and human friendly. The code was designed to use
mnemonic characters to input instructions, such as
‘a’ for add. She later was the chairperson for the
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