Wayback

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: teddymills <teddy-5sHjOODPK7E at public.gmane.org>

| http://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/search.php

Nice.  Must resist reading it all.

| Love that IMSAI 8080 and the Osbourne Laptop :)

Well, the IMSAI 8080 was an improved copy of the Altair 8080 (I have
an Altair).  Drew used to use an IMSAI.

Do you mean the Osborne 1 portable?  It was not a laptop.  I have a
Kaypro II, which is an improved copy of the O1.

I like the Ferranti Mercury brochure
  http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Ferranti/Ferranti.Mercury.1956.102646224.pdf

They used 1k bit core arrays for memory.  Apparently the system has 44
so about 5.5KiB (1k words, with parity).  A word can hold one number
or two "orders" (instructions).  There is a drum that can hold about
16k words.  All normal arithmetic is apparently floating point.  An
add takes 180 microseconds.  Index register ("b-line") operations take
only 60 microseconds.

This was a successor to the Ferranti/Manchester Mark I an I*.  The
second computer at the U of T was the FERUT, a Mark I (variant?) I
think.  The first one was home made.  The FERUT predated core memory:
it used Williams Tubes for fast memory (b-lines, accumulator).  I
*think* that it used a drum for main memory but it might have been a
mercury delay line -- I just don't remember.  This computer was
probably housed in the SF half of the building we meet in, but I don't
know.  See, for example, page 43 of
  http://invention.smithsonian.org/downloads/fa_cohc_abstracts_e-g.pdf

Gotleib mentioned to me that he knew Turing from the time he was in
England preparing for the FERUT.

Another interesting Ferut person is J. N. P. Hume.
http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/85.279227
Among other things, he and Ivey were the first hosts of The Nature of
Things.  He was the Master of Massey College after Roberston Davies
(if I remember correctly).

This looks to be a nice history of computing in the early days at the U of 
T.
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~williams/History_web_site/World%20map%20first%20page/Canada/a2004.pdf
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