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23 August Press Release: Atlas To Be Purchased

1961

AEA BUYS BRITISH COMPUTER

Financial Times: 24.08.61

The UK Atomic Energy Authority is to have the world's most powerful computer to be installed at the National Institute for Nuclear Research, Harwell. Named the Atlas, it is the fruit of ten years of close collaboration between Ferranti and Manchester University and in it current electronic computing and circuitry techniques are taken virtually to the limit.

This is the third Atlas to be built. The first was a pilot model which has been operating since 1960, while the second is now being installed at Manchester University. The price of the machine lies between £2m. and £3½m. according to the range of additional equipment used with it.

The very high computing speed obtainable with Atlas has been made possible by three innovations: the provision of a supervisory system that makes its own decisions on regulating the flow of work through the machine to give maximum efficiency, a fixed store which holds often-needed routines and data from which information can be extracted at least four times as fast as in current designs and a fast-carry adder which ensures that addition is not hampered by carry-over propagating from one digit to the next.

Purchase of a large British machine by the Atomic Energy Authority, acting for N.I.R.N.S., is taken as an encouraging sign by computer builders in this country, because hitherto, the A.E.A. has favoured the U.S.-designed I.B.M. for its very large machines and is at present negotiating for a modified version of the big I.B.M. Stretch computer. The fact that I.B.M. machines are rented rather than purchased outright does not alter the position.

The A.E.A. already has an impressive array of computers, as the following table shows:-

Organisation Type Made by
Research Group
Harwell Mercury Ferranti, U.K.
Reactor Group
Winfrith Mercury Ferranti, U.K.
Winfrith Pace Electronic Assocs. Inc., U.S.
Risley Mercury Ferranti, U.K.
Risley IBM 704 Intl. Business Machines, U.S.
Risley Pace Electronic Assocs. Inc., U.S.
Windscale IBM 1620 Intl. Business Machines, U.S.
Production Group
Capenhurst Deuce English Electric Co., U.K.
Calder Hall Elliott 609 Elliott Bros., U.K.
Weapons Group
Aldermaston IBM 7090 Intl. Business Machines, U.S.
Aldermaston Ferranti Mark I Ferranti, U.K.
Aldermaston Deuce English Electric Co., U.K.

COMPUTER TO HELP WEATHER MEN

Financial Times: 24.08.61

An Atlas electronic digital computer has been ordered for the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority announced yesterday.

Together with the necessary buildings it will cost about £3,500,000 and will be installed at the institute's Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, Harwell.

It should be ready for use early in 1964. At present the prototype is being assembled at Manchester University.

The Meteorological Office is likely to be one of the computer's main users. The office has been using a Mercury computer for some years. The Atlas will allow a big extension to be made, first in research and later, it is hoped in the forecasting service.

£3 million Atlas computer for Harwell in 1964

Prototype goes to university

The Guardian: 24.08.61

An Atlas computer costing nearly £3 millions has been ordered for the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science. it will be ready for use in 1964 at the institute's Rutherford laboratory at Harwell.

The Atomic Energy Authority, the universities, and Government departments - including the Meteorological Office - will also use it.

A prototype of Atlas is now being installed in the department of computer engineering at Manchester University which has co-operated with Ferranti Ltd., the manufacturers, in its development. The prototype is expected to be in operation at the university next year.

Substantial demand

The Atomic Energy Authority and some of the universities have a substantial demand for computer-time. A spokesman for the AEA said yesterday that the Atlas could handle so much work that it was decided to provide one machine for common use in the first instance and that the institute had been asked to manage it. Like the use of the institute's other facilities, however, university requirements for the computer would be judged on their scientific merits; when accepted, they would be provided without charge to the universities. It is expected, however, that future computers as big as Atlas for university use would be located at individual universities.

The AEA is handling the contract negotiations for the institute, and it is expected that the total cost of the scheme, including the buildings to house Atlas will be about £3.25 millions. The biggest demands on Atlas at Harwell will probably be made bt the team working at the Culham laboratory on the behaviour of a mass of plasma when acted on by electric and magnetic fields.

A great deal of computation is also needed in the investigations being carried out at Harwell into the physics of solids. For example, to predict the behaviour of materials used in nuclear reactors under extreme conditions of temperature and irradiation requires extensive calculation.

The universities, covering the whole field of scientific research are finding an increasing need for computation on a big scale; the Atlas at the institute is intended to supplement their resources in their work on the problems of astrophysics, cosmology, fluid dynamics, and molecular structure. An example of electronic computation as a research tool is that the structure of the vitamin B1 was worked out by the analysis of X-Ray diffraction patterns on a computer. Similar work, but on a much larger scale, is now done on the protein myoglobin.

Experiments with Nimrod

The institute will also require a great deal of computer time in interpreting the experiments with Nimrod, the 7,000mv. proton synchrotron now being built at the Rutherford laboratory. An Orion computer is to be installed to deal with the bulk of this work, but it is anticipated that some of it beyond Orion's capacity will have to be handled by the Atlas. The latter will also be used in theoretical studies of future high-energy accelerators, involving calculations of the motion of charged particles in electric and magnetic fields which vary both in space and in time.

Predicting weather by computation is about fifty years old but the scale of the job made it quite impractical until the development of the electronic computer. The Meteorological Office has been working with a Mercury computer for some years, and now uses numerical methods for part of its forecasting. It is expected that Atlas will allow this work to be extended first on the research side, and later in the actual forecasting service. Other scientific departments of the Government will also have demands on the Atlas to be installed at the institute.

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