Atlas 50th Anniversary -- Overview

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the Ferranti Atlas supercomputer, a Symposium and social events was held at The University of Manchester from 4th to 6th December 2012.

The high-performance Atlas computer was developed in the period 1956 - 1962 by a team led by Professor Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester. The local company Ferranti Ltd. joined the project in 1959. The first production Atlas was inaugurated at Manchester University on 7th December 1962 by Sir John Cockcroft, the Nobel prize-winning physicist who was Director of the UK's Atomic Energy Authority. At the time of its inauguration, Atlas was reckoned to be the world's most powerful computer. A total of six Atlas 1 and Atlas 2 computers were delivered between 1962 and 1966.

To organise a celebration for this remarkable computer, a Working Group was formed with representatives from the following organisations:

• Manchester University Atlas: David Aspinall and Simon Lavington
• Ferranti Ltd.: John Buckle and Keith Howker
• The NIRNS/Chilton Atlas: Bob Hopgood
• The London Atlas: Dik Leatherdale
• Atlas 2 and the Cambridge Titan: David Hartley
• University of Manchester representative: Toby Howard, School of Computer Science.

(Simon Lavington, David Hartley and Dik Leatherdale were also committee members of the Computer Conservation Society.)

The main programme on 5th December was:

• Welcome by Jim Miles and John Buckle.
• Simon Lavington: The birth-pains of the British Supercomputer project, 1955 - 1959: BISON (Built In Spite Of NRDC).
• Dai Edwards: Designing and building Atlas.
• Dave Howarth: How we got Atlas to sort itself out.
• Barry Landy: Atlas' little brother; a scrounged computer makes good.
• Brian Hardisty: My involvement with Atlas: reminiscences of events, and how Atlas shaped my later career.
• Dik Leatherdale: The London University Atlas: acquired for just £500,000and put to work to pay the other £1,500,000.
• Keith Jeffery: The Chilton Atlas: setting the standard for National Computing Facilities.

There was an accompanying exhibition of significant Atlas artifacts, photos and documents. An Atlas emulator and an Atlas simulator were specially developed for the Symposium and both were demonstrated.

Roland Ibbett's HASE simulator allows the Atlas register-level architecture to be visualised.

Dik Leatherdale's emulator runs individual Atlas programs. It allows the execution of original and newly-written Atlas programs including ones using extracodes. There are three parts to the emulator:

• The base of the system is an emulation of the virtual store. This supports the remaining two elements.
• A compiler for the Atlas assembly language (Atlas Basic Language, ABL). This is not the original compiler, but a newly-written compiler built in to the emulator.
• The execution engine. Once you have successfully compiled the program you can request that the program be executed. You can examine contents of the emulated store and mark particular instructions as break points. When the program attempts to execute such an instruction, it will halt and you will have the opportunity to re-examine the store and either request instructions to be executed one at a time or ask the program to resume normally.

Some additional historical accounts were prepared by former Atlas people. These were originally published by Simon Lavington as part of the "Memories of the Ferranti Atlas computer" site:
http://elearn.cs.man.ac.uk/~atlas/ now available at:
http://curation.cs.manchester.ac.uk/atlas/elearn.cs.man.ac.uk/_atlas/

• The Atlas Story
• NRDC and the case for a British supercomputer, 1956 to 1960.
• Timeline of the MUSE/Atlas project at Manchester University, 1955-1971.
• The Compiler Compiler - Reflections of a User 50 Years On.
• Memories of Atlas Fortran.
• My involvement with Atlas: reminiscences of events.
• Atlas 2 at Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory.
• Days and nights with the Manchester Atlas.
• Recollections of the Computer Laboratory at Manchester 1955 to 1964.
• Anecdotes of an Atlas maintenance engineer
• The footloose Australian - Peter Jones' Atlas experience
• The London University Atlas
• The story of Atlas, a computer
• Audio interview 1: Atlas Supervisor (Howarth/Wyld)
• Audio interview 2: Atlas hardware (Edwards/Chen)
• Engineering credibility
• Yao Chen rides to the rescue
• Chilton Atlas hardware at the National Museums Scotland
• Designing and building Atlas
• Mercury Autocode, Atlas Autocode and some associated matters
• Tony Brooker and the Atlas Compiler Compiler
• Ferranti Atlas 2 computers at AWRE Aldermaston and at the CAD Centre
• My Life On Atlas 1 and 2 - Brian Chapman

Google have produced a short documentary film featuring interviews with some of the key people in the Atlas story.

An illustrated booklet was prepared to mark the 50th anniversary. This gives the overall story of the Atlas project from its inception to the switching-off of the last working Atlas.