Corporate Body

CSIRAC (1949 - )

From
1949
Australia
Functions
Computer Technology or Multimedia
Website
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/csirac/

Summary

In the late 1940s Australian scientists embarked on an ambitious project to design and build, from the ground up, a programmable digital computer. They succeeded. The computer they created was not only the first computer in Australia, it was one of the very first in the world. This was the CSIR Mk 1 computer (later renamed CSIRAC). It provided a computing service through the 1950s and well into the 1960s. Furthermore, it survives intact and is now considered to be the oldest survivor of the machines which started the digital revolution.

Archival resources

Museum Victoria

  • Records of CSIRAC; Museum Victoria. Details

Published resources

Books

  • Doornbusch, Paul, The Music of CSIRAC: Australia's first computer music (Melbourne: Common Ground Publishing, 2005), 101 pp. Details
  • Doornbusch, Paul, The Music of CSIRAC: Australia's first computer music (Australia: Common Ground Publishing, 2005), CD plus 101 pp. Details
  • McCann, Doug and Thorne, Peter, The Last of the First CSIRAC: Australia's First Computer (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000), 196 pp. Details

Journal Articles

  • Beard, M.; Pearcey, T., 'The Genesis of an Early Stored-Program Computer: CSIRAC', Annals of the History of Computing, 6 (2) (1984), 106-115. Details
  • Gillespie, Richard, 'Collecting computers - and computer users', University of Melbourne Collections, 22 (2018), 12-22. Details

Resources

Ailie Smith

EOAS ID: biogs/A001636b.htm

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