The Atlas, Britain's new electronic computer costing a basic £2,000,000 has caused a stir in the United States, where it was introduced by Dr David Howarth at the 4000-delegate Eastern Joint Computer conference in Washington. The outstanding feature of this machine is its built-in supervisor which takes the place of an operator by pressing its own buttons. Although Dr Howarth did not get any firm orders while he was in America he is optimistic about being able to break into the U.S. market.
It has created plenty of interest in America, especially among scientific
establishments engaged on space projects. The two great problems that face
us are the delivery time - two to two-and-a-half years - and the difficulty of
transporting it across the Atlantic. There is a possibility that the machine
may be built by the Canadian subsidiary, Ferranti Packard of Toronto.
The price is by no means excessive for a computer of this calibre
says Dr
Howarth. There are none cheaper even without a built in supervisor
.
The word scientist usually conjures up a picture of a dry, uncommunicative man who lives in a special world of his own, surrounded by regiments of figures and ranks of algebraic symbols. But this would certainly be the wrong picture to describe the head of the computation group attached to the Nuclear Physics Department at Harwell, Dr. Jack Howlett. Here is a man completely unlike the scientist in a book. He is very human with a warm personality and a strong sense of humour. He has the gift of clever men of making the person to whom he is talking feel cleverer than usual. One of the most impressive things about him is that, although he has been working with computers for more than a decade, is conversant with the highest forms of mathematics and has had to explain it all to hundreds of comparatively ignorant people, he retains tremendous enthusiasm for his job. He is able to communicate his own excitement and wonder at the power of his tremendous machines to the layman.
The 49-year-old mathematician and organizer has now taken on one of his biggest assignments-the running of the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science's new Atlas project. The Atlas, among the world's most powerful electronic computers. was developed by the British electronics firm, Ferranti, and will cost about £3,500,000, including its installation and building. Operational in 1963, the computer is being set up next to the Rutherford High Energy laboratory at Harwell, Berkshire.
It is not easy obtaining permission to enter Harwell. But once you have been vetted by the security guard at the main gate, issued with a pass and a snow-white disc to clip on your lapel you can go in. The atmosphere is strange and exciting. Through windows you glimpse gleaming apparatus and busy figures with mill boards. Dr. Howlett's office is in a redbrick building near the middle of the estate. Half-way along the ground floor corridor is a door with a typewritten label Dr. J. Howlett, and his secretary's name. Inside works one of the most important men at Harwell. His office is simple and tidy. On the wall is a blackboard covered with algebraic equations; next to it are bookshelves full of mathematical books. He was born in 1912, educated at Stand Grammar School, Manchester, and Manchester University. He worked in the research department of the former London, Midland and Scottish Railway and then, in 1940, joined the Ministry of Supply, where he worked on electronics, helping to pioneer Britain's radar equipment for the war. In 1948 he went to work at Harwell, where be has remained ever since.
Dr. Howlett lives with his wife and five children, 13 miles from Harwell, near Oxford. His eldest son is at Magdalen, reading mathematics. "He is interested in computers. Of course, he has come into contact with this sort of work through myself and my friends and has been up here to have a look around. But I think he may prefer to teach. I would be pleased if he did, for I think it a worth-while profession". In his office he works in his shirt-sleeves. As he talks he runs his fingers through his greying hair or leans back, tilting his chair, with his hands folded behind his head. When the conversation really interests him he leans forward on his desk. His slightly nervous manner, the way he changes his position and moves his hands, may be more noticeable because he does not smoke.
He talked of the new project with fervour. "Atlas is the most powerful computer on the English market, and equals any comparable computer in the world. It will add two numbers in one or two microseconds (thousandths of a second) and multiplies and divides in two or three microseconds. In five microseconds, the time it takes light to travel one mile, it can add three numbers and divide them by another one. It is approximately a million times more powerful than a man using a hand-operated machine. Computers have reduced weeks of calculation to seconds." A problem facing the operators of electronic computers is the shortage of top class mathematicians to programme them. Dr. Howlett says: "Virtually anything, concrete or abstract, can be broken down and represented in terms of mathematics. But entirely new mathematical techniques are needed to convert this information into a language which the machine can deal with."
Dr. Howlett holds strong views on mathematical education in this country. "A lot of the teaching methods need revision, but the subject that is worst taught is, in my view, mathematics. It is a fascinating subject, practically applicable to many interesting things in our lives, but children are put off from the start by the boring and unimaginative way it is taught. The universities have developed a more progressive approach to the subject, but lower down in the educational system there is a dire need for new teaching methods."
The operation of the Atlas computer will require a staff of about 60. It will be used not only by NIRNS, but by universities, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and by other Government departments. One of the fields in which computers are playing a progressively bigger part is meteorology, where they are used to calculate pressure patterns. In structural chemistry and the study of virus and protein structure the use of computers has made possible an entirely new approach. Atlas will be used a great deal by the Culham Laboratory team, who arc studying the behaviour of plasma - a gas containing positive and negative ions - when acted on by electric and magnetic fields. All these studies require incredibly complicated and long computations, which have become possible only since the introduction of electronic computers.
All of these computations arc carried out under the direction of Dr. Howlett. "It is this that makes my job so fascinating. I get a bird's-eye view of many of the most interesting and complicated sciences. I would not swap it for any other job in the world." Smilingly, he talked about the comparative reasoning powers of machines and human beings, aware that, to the layman, it sounded like science fiction. But he insisted on making it clear that the whole science of computers is entirely mathematical. "In theory, a computer cannot do anything that a man cannot. It is only the great speed with which it works and its ability to store vast amounts of information at its finger-tips that enables it to do things impossible for a person, by reason of his life being too short to finish computations reaching into realms of this magnitude."
Apart from the interest in his work, Howlett gets most enjoyment from art. "I particularly like the French Impressionists." In his secretary's office hangs a reproduction of Renoir's "La Logie," and in his own office, behind his desk, Rousseau's "Snake Charmer" ("Rousseau is really a primitive painter, but his work is of the same period and I like it very much "). Asked if, as a mathematician, he liked Bach, he smiled and said: "Yes, the correlation works. I like music a great deal; my favourite works are Beethoven's late quartets, from Opus I II onwards. They are very ingenious and very, very beautiful to listen to."
Dr. Jack Howlett has been working with computers for 12 years. In fact, he helped in the construction of the first computer in this country, which was made by the electronics department at Harwell in 1948. Five years later it was sold. to Wolverhampton Technical College, where it is still used to train computer mathematicians.
