Jack Howlett, the first and only Director of the Atlas Computer Laboratory died recently aged 86.
Jack, a numerical analyst, was one of a select group who recognised the significance of computing and influenced the development of mechanical and, later, electronic computing. Educated at Stand grammar school, he went on to read mathematics at Manchester University. He then worked, pre-war, for London Midland Scottish Railways - introducing to engineers the benefits of computation and analysis. From 1940 until 1946 he was a member of a Manchester University group which built a mechanical differential analyser, an analogue machine which was probably then Europe's most powerful calculating engine. The group's calculations made a valuable contribution to the atomic bomb project and led him to take charge, in 1948, of what became the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment's computing section of the Theoretical Physics Division. Incidentally, the job offer came from that well known Russian spy, Klaus Fuchs, who was at that time head of the division.
In 1958 Harwell acquired a Ferranti Mercury computer which was used by both Harwell and the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory (RHEL). For reactor design, there was a need for much more powerful computers and IBM embarked on the design of a new computer called Stretch. A British machine of similar power was needed to keep the UK in the computer business - the Mercury was a massive leap forward. With Manchester University and Ferranti, Jack and the Harwell Group were involved in planning the Atlas project. The aim was for a large computer to serve the needs of Risley, Harwell, Culham and the UK universities!
In 1961 Jack became the Director of the new laboratory and its only employee for quite a while. Jack acquired a piece of land in 1962 and building work started on the current Atlas Centre, which was completed in 1963. The Atlas machine was installed in the spring of 1964. It came in 19 large trucks and took a month to install - a massive machine for those days with 48K words of main memory, 96Kword drums and 18 magnetic tape decks!
About 25 of the old Harwell Group moved across to help get the project off the ground (Paul Bryant and Bob Hopgood are still with us!). There was a large operations group, and both systems and applications programming groups. About 20 current ITD staff were members of the Atlas Laboratory.
Others have moved departments, some even reached Daresbury (Vic Saunders and Martin Guest). As well as nuclear physics, there was application work in finite elements, crystallography, time-series analysis and text analysis which was in its infancy. Collaboration with the Meteorological Office led to a weather forecasting model which forms the basis of current computer-based forecasts.
Under Jack's direction, the Laboratory attracted a stream of British and overseas visitors. A former Atlas employee Jim Hailstone remembers Jack, He was loved and respected, he knew everyone by name and to have been a member of Jack's Atlas Laboratory is recognised as a privilege. The Atlas Laboratory's visitors book bears ample witness to the array of famous scientists and engineers who came to see him. The Atlas ran until 1973 (the Atlas Centre was extended to its current size to host an ICL 1906A which ran in parallel with Atlas for a while).
On Jack's retirement in 1975, the Atlas Laboratory merged with the Rutherford Laboratory. Jack then became chairman of the national committee on computer networks for two years and continued to work as a consultant to the computer company ICL, editing its technical journal. He is survived by his wife Joan, who he married in 1939, four sons and a daughter.
