The ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was the first computer designed in Britain; it was designed by Alan Turing in 1946. Jump to: navigation, search A computer is a device or machine for processing information from data according to a program — a compiled list of instructions. ... Jump to: navigation, search Alan Turing is often considered the father of modern computer science. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...

On February 19, 1946 Turing presented a paper to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) Executive Committee, giving the first complete design of a stored-program computer. Unlike most other early computers, it owed nothing to EDVAC; it was a completely independent design which was contemporaneous with EDVAC. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, near London. ... Bold text EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers. ...

The ACE had a 48-bit word. It used delay line main memory, and contained about 7000 vacuum tubes. Its multiplication time was about 448 microseconds. Jump to: navigation, search This article is about the unit of information. ... In computing, word is a term for the natural unit of data used by a particular computer design. ... The term delay line has multiple meanings: In electronics and derivative fields such as telecommunications, a delay line is rigorously defined as a single-input-channel device, in which the output channel state at a given instant, t, is the same as the input channel state at the instant t... Primary storage is a category of computer storage, often called main memory. ... In electronics, a vacuum tube (American English) or (thermionic) valve (British English) is a device generally used to amplify, or otherwise modify, a signal. ... A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth (10-6) of a second. ...

Due to various difficulties, the first version of the ACE actually built was the Pilot ACE, a smaller version of Turing's original complete design. The full-scale version was constructed later, in the late 1950s; it was working by late 1957, but was already obsolete, due to its reliance on delay-line main memory. The Pilot ACE was the first computer designed in the United Kingdom, by Alan Turing and James H. Wilkinson in the late 1940s. ... Jump to: navigation, search // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the...

Further reading

• David M. Yates, Turing's Legacy: A History of Computing at the National Physical Laboratory, 1945-1995 (Science Museum, London, 1997)
• Simon H. Lavington, Early British Computers: The Story of Vintage Computers and The People Who Built Them (Manchester University Press, 1980)

References

• B. E. Carpenter, R. W. Doran, A. M. Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1986)
• J. H. Wilkinson, Turing's Work at the National Physical Laboratory and the Construction of Pilot ACE, DEUCE and ACE (in Nicholas Metropolis, J. Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota, (editors), A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, Academic Press, New York, 1980)

External links

• Events in the history of NPL - ACE computer