Kirstin Sibley & Andrew Baker present
June
E17
E A Newman & Pilot ACE: Turing’s Legacy
IN V ISIB L E N U M B ERS
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ACE PILOT MODEL 1950
NPL
Ted Newman, NPL, 1950. Photograph: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
The Groundbreaking
Pilot ACE The Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) was based on Alan Turing’s 1945 design for a stored-program general-purpose computer. The design of a multi-tasking ‘universal’ machine and the use of memory to store applications were brilliant innovations. Pilot ACE was the test version of ACE. It ran its first program in 1950 and was groundbreaking in its structure, achieving fast performance from a relatively small amount of hardware. Walthamstow-born Ted Newman, an electronics engineer, together with mathematician Jim Wilkinson, was responsible for realising Turing’s ideas. The computer went on to provide the world’s first large-scale external commercial computing service, and played a role in scientific discoveries and industrial innovations.
Alan Turing, NPL Sports Day, 1946. Courtesy of NPL.
Ted Newman: From E17 to Pilot ACE Ted Newman was born on 27 April 1918 at 9 Coleridge Road, off Palmerston Road, E17. He attended William Morris School in Gainsford Road and went on to study physics at UCL, receiving his BSc in 1938. After working briefly at Masteradio he joined Electrical and Musical Industries (later EMI) in 1941. There he worked with the legendary electronics pioneer Alan Blumlein on an airborne radar system known as H2S.
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Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician and computer scientist, is generally remembered for his work at Bletchley Park, where he developed the Bombe, a device for decrypting the German Enigma codes. His achievements were popularised by the 2014 film, The Imitation Game. However, Turing’s interest in computing can be traced back to 1936, when he wrote his seminal paper, 'On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem'. In it, he proved that his ‘universal computing machine’ would be capable of performing any mathematical computation that could be represented by an algorithm.
Ted’s experience of complex circuits and pulse techniques at EMI was invaluable to his work at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), which he joined in 1947. Here he headed an electronics team of 10 who were responsible for building the revolutionary Pilot ACE. Ted was key to its development and is credited with setting high standards of circuit performance and stability, and with getting the memory to work.
In 1945, Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to develop a new computer, writing 'Proposals for the development in the Mathematics Division of an Automatic Computing Machine' (ACE). His report was the first substantially complete description of a practical stored-program computer (one which could store applications in memory). John Womersley, Superintendent of the Maths Divison, coined the term ACE as a homage to Charles Babbage's 'engine'. Turing’s mathematics team, writing code for the as yet unbuilt machine, became pioneers of modern computer programming.
Ted was by all accounts an energetic, perceptive and cheerful man with a comfortably disorganised lifestyle and a wide range of interests, including cycling, gardening and running. Ted was a well-liked member of the NPL team noted for his originality, impishness and irreverent sense of humour.
After Ted joined the NPL he spent time with Turing discussing the direction of the project. However, in the same year Turing grew disillusioned with the lack of progress and left for a sabbatical at the University of Cambridge. In 1948 he took a job at the University of Manchester, working on the Mark 1 computer. The two men remained close, and Ted visited his friend in Manchester several times before Turing’s untimely death in 1954.
Passing The Baton Ted bonded with Turing over their shared interests in cross-country running and the workings of the human brain. Ted was particularly interested in the successful use of valves and mercury delay lines at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, and he and Turing made a number of trips there. Tommy Flowers, who built the Colossus which was used against the German Lorenz cipher machine, had proved that valves, if left on continuously, could be faster and more reliable than mechanical switches. Mercury delay lines were an early form of memory that would also be key in Pilot ACE’s successful launch. Ted picks up the story …
When I joined NPL Alan was still part of the ACE team.
However, he wasn’t in the National Physical Laboratory very often.
Alan Turing
He had all sorts of other interesting things that he liked to do.
He was quite obsessed with knowing how the human brain worked ...
So twice we ran to Dollis Hill to look at the delay lines there. And back.
Before I joined the team Harry and Jim would race Alan to Dollis Hill.
NPL
Ted Newman Harry Huskey Jim Wilkinson
+
more
... and the possible connections with his work on computers.
I found out he was a marathon runner, and I was too.
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ACE PILOT MODEL 1950
NPL
+ 16 miles
Jim rode his bicycle and Harry took three different trains.
Harry carried Alan’s clothes and arrived a few minutes before him.
Alan would change from his shorts and go into the meeting.
But when we ran together we could chat about this and that ...
Alan, have you thought of trying out for the Olympics? *
... in particular about what he believed was the right thing to do with ACE.
Alan left NPL shortly after I joined, to take a sabbatical at Cambridge.
But not before he had imparted his vision for ACE to me....
We have to manufacture or design a machine that will do complicated mathematics.
* Turing came 5th in a large qualifying event for the 1948 London Olympics. He decided to enter the trials, but developed a hip problem, quashing his Olympic hopes.
...using our runs to pass the baton.
Pilot ACE Large, fast and portable The Pilot ACE ran its first program on 10 May 1950. It was the fourth stored-program general-purpose computer in the world, after the Manchester ‘Baby’ (1948), Cambridge EDSAC (1949) and US SEAC (1950). The computer was built by a team of 14 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL): 4 mathematicians (Jim Wilkinson, Mike Woodger, Donald Davies and Gerald Alway); and 10 electronics engineers led by Ted Newman. The design was conceived by Alan Turing in 1945, but administrative issues delayed the project and work on Pilot ACE did not begin until 1948. It was 5 to 10 times faster than contemporary machines, while employing significantly fewer electronic components (800 valves compared with 3,000 in the EDSAC). However, it was harder to program than other computers of the time: efficient operation of the machine depended on a specialised approach known as ‘optimum coding’.
DSIR Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, a government organisation.
DSIR
HOLLERITH CARD READER An input and output device, invented in 1889, which used punched cards.
PUNCH CARD Contained digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in pre-defined positions. William Morris used similar technology to weave his Willow pattern on a Jacquard loom in 1877.
CONTROL DESK This read from the punched card deck, commenced the program and allowed access to the delay lines (memory). It incorporated a cathode ray tube monitor which displayed the contents of a delay line.
3.66m in length
ACE Automatic Computing Engine. The word ‘engine’ is a homage to Charles Babbage’s calculating engines of the 1820s and ‘30s.
1950 On 10 May 1950 Pilot ACE ran its first program. It was demonstrated to the press and VIPs between 29 November and 1 December.
PILOT The Pilot ACE was a smaller version of Alan Turing’s original design from 1945. A full-scale ACE was completed in 1957.
ACE PILOT MODEL 1950
SHORT DELAY LINES An early form of computer memory, using mercury, that performed the role of today’s random access memory (RAM). From 1951, long delay lines were housed in a large temperature-controlled cabinet behind the mainframe. VALVES 800 glass valves, some with colour-coded sleeves which indicated different types and functions.
NPL Pilot ACE was built at the NPL, the UK’s National Measurement Institute based at Bushy Park in Teddington. The NPL was founded in 1900 and is still a centre for scientific research today.
NPL
CHASSIS The rack could contain up to 40 vertical chassis, which housed the valves. LEGS AND WHEELS Despite its enormous size, Pilot ACE was portable. It was moved from its birthplace in Bushy House to the Maths Division in 1952, where it provided a commercial service.
1.8m tall
Pilot ACE at Work After its debut in 1950, Pilot ACE provided the world’s first external computer service on a significant scale, which was managed by Tom Vickers. It was succeeded by an engineered version called DEUCE, which was installed in 1955. Around three-quarters of the jobs performed by Pilot ACE involved solving problems in linear algebra. For the most part, these tasks were commissioned and paid for by the defence ministries and the aircraft industry. Over time, this created a library of problem-solving applications.
Crystallography Nobel-prize winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin discovered the molecular structure of B12, and later insulin, with the aid of a program written for Pilot ACE by her research student John Rollett. The structure of B12 was published in 1955 and the crystallography programs became widely available from 1956.
CERN In 1953 Pilot ACE was used to carry out an extensive investigation into the stability of particle orbits in the proposed synchrotron at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. The machine would accelerate electrons to almost the speed of light.
Ordnance Maps One of the first external jobs undertaken by Pilot ACE was the analysis of map-making stereograms for the Ordnance Survey Office. Up until this date the process involved extensive manual calculations, which took around a day. Pilot ACE drastically reduced this time – to around a minute.
Comet Air Disasters The British-built Comet, the world's first passenger jet airliner, revolutionised air travel in the early 1950s. However, the planes were grounded after a series of crashes. Eventually, with the help of intricate calculations undertaken by Pilot ACE, the cause was attributed to metal fatigue at the corners of the square windows. All aircraft were subsequently redesigned with rounded windows.
Wind Tunnels The NPL worked with the Royal Aircraft Establishment on the design of supersonic wind-tunnels. The correct shape of Mach numbers (a measure of speed based on the speed of sound) were determined using finite element analysis performed by Pilot ACE. Road Traffic Simulation Pilot ACE carried out the first-ever simulation of traffic control, for the Road Research Laboratory. A team from the RRL programmed the machine, which enabled them to analyse optimum settings for traffic signals under varying traffic conditions. Coal Mines In 1954 the Safety in Mines Research Board used Pilot ACE to analyse the warning systems used in coal mines for the National Coal Board.
Geomagnetism One of the larger and more difficult pieces of computation carried out involved the verification of Sir Edward Bullard’s theory of the origins of the earth’s magnetic field. Unfortunately, while numerically satisfactory, the results were geologically inconclusive.
HMS Ark Royal The Royal Admiralty wanted to calculate the stresses in the steam catapult retardation structure of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. This was a large job for Pilot ACE, involving the solution of 20 simultaneous non-linear differential equations.
Atomic Spectral Lines Pilot ACE was used for the analysis of spectral lines for the Atomic Energy Research Establishment.
Train Timetables Pilot ACE was used to compute train timetables from 1954. A timetable program was later written by the English Electronic Company for DEUCE, the successor to Pilot ACE.
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NPL
This will take a minute or two ...
DEUCE vs iMac Pilot ACE was developed into a fully engineered commercial version by the English Electric Company. The Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine (DEUCE) incorporated all the later improvements to Pilot ACE, including a drum memory store. While it looked very different, with its streamlined cabinet, there was little difference between the two from a programmer’s point of view. Computing has moved on immeasurably in the 62 years since the DEUCE’s launch in 1955. Valves have been replaced by chips; delay lines superseded by RAM; and early British innovation squeezed out by American investment and competition. A comparison between the DEUCE and the latest iMac is an enlightening exercise!
Active elements
1,194
1.3-1.9 billion transistors
1,450 valves The most common domestic use of valves these days is in microwave ovens
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Weight in kg
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Dimensions in mm
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9,000
4267 x 1371 x 2108
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inside a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 chip
Price
£50,000 (equivalent to approx £1.2m in today's money) £1,049
197
(33 when idle)
459 x 528 x 175 Fast Response Memory 12 mercury delay lines (equivalent to 1.5KB of memory in modern terminology).
Monitor 2 x 6 inch monochrome cathode ray tube
8GB of onboard RAM
21.5 inch LED-backlit colour display
Kirstin Sibley: concept, historical and picture research Andrew Baker: illustration and graphic design. Represented by Debut art at www.debutart.com Dr Oliver Duke-Williams, UCL: additional technical research and Coding Early Computers talk Lucy George: sub-editing Bibliography, curated image boards and digital copy of the publication available at www.invisiblenumbers.co.uk © Andrew Baker and Kirstin Sibley, 2017
This publication was produced to accompany the Invisible Numbers group exhibition at Winns Gallery, London, part of the E17 Art Trail, 8-18 June 2017. www.invisible numbers.co.uk Special thanks to: Oli for his invaluable advice;Victoria at The Stow Brothers; Bob Newman, Steve Vickers and John Nash; Laura Kerry and Morag McGuire at Artillery; Jo Parker, Waltham Forest Archives; Sharon and Sarah from NPL; Melanie from Getty Images; Mark from Alpha Images;Vince from L&S; Marshall from Wakefield Labels; Nancy Slonims, Ben Hendy, Woodrow Phoenix and Rob Crow at Middlesex University; Linda Hughes and the Baker boys; Hannah for curating and project managing Invisible Numbers; and the rest of the I.N. tribe.
If you wanted to have as much memory as an iMac, using DEUCE technology, how much mercury would you need? 700,000 tonnes (the same weight as 116,000 African elephants or 2 Empire State Buildings).
Pilot ACE’s Life Cycle Pilot ACE evolved over 10 years: from being conceived as ACE in 1945; to running its first program in 1950; to then becoming obsolete with the launch of the DEUCE in 1955. However, its story goes back much earlier to Turing’s seminal paper of 1936 and the incredible work of Flowers, Turing and others during WWII. It is thanks to the foresight of the NPL, who chose to bequeath it to the Science Museum in, 1956, that this groundbreaking machine has been preserved for posterity. 1936
Alan Turing writes 'On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem'
1939
Turing arrives at Bletchley Park, where he works with Gordon Welchman to develop the Bombe, a device for decrypting German messages enciphered by Enigma machines
1945
Turing joins the Mathematics Division at the National Physical Laboratory Turing writes 'Proposals for the development in the Mathematics Division of an Automatic Computing Machine' John Womersley coins the term ACE as a homage to Charles Babbage's 'engine'
1946
Turing awarded OBE for wartime service Press reports on news of Turing's 'Electronic Brain' Formation of ACE team starts, and is completed the following year
1947
Turing and his team pioneer computer programming, writing a library of sophisticated programs for the unbuilt ACE Ted Newman joins ACE team in Electronics Section of Radio Division Ted and Turing run from the NPL to Dollis Hill to inspect the mercury delay lines Turing goes on sabbatical at the University of Cambridge
1948
ACE team commences construction of pilot version Turing leaves the NPL to work on the Mark I computer at The University of Manchester ACE team from Mathematics Division joins those in the Radio Division
1950
Pilot ACE runs its first programme Public demonstrations of Pilot ACE
1952
Pilot ACE moved to Mathematics Division and put into full-time use as a working computer, providing a commercial service to industry The English Electric Co. starts to develop a commercial version of Pilot ACE (DEUCE). 33 built.
1954
Magnetic drum store added to Pilot ACE Work begins on full-scale version of ACE, the successor to DEUCE Turing dies aged 41 (7 June)
1955
The first production versions of DEUCE are launched (including the NPL's machine)
1956
Pilot ACE ceases operation Mainframe, control desk and two delay lines bequeathed to the Science Museum
Left: Ted Newman. Courtesy of Bob Newman. Right: Left to right: Ted Newman, Francis Colebrook, Jim Wilkinson and Donald Davies, NPL, 1950. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Cover image, left to right: Gerald Alway,Ted Newman and Jim Wilkinson, NPL, 1950. Photograph: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.