Cumming, Malcolm John ( - 2019)

Summary

Malcolm Cumming worked his whole career at CSIRO as a research scientist doing computer modelling. He was a graduate of the University of Melborune and was a post-graduate and lecturer at Columbia Unviersity, New York from the late 1950s to 1962.

Details

From Beale (2005) page 48: "Pratt recalls that in 1962, the year the CES [Chemical Engineering Section] became a Division, Malcolm Cumming was appointed to the Division, bringing with him extensive experience of using the
University of Melbourne's analogue computer. An Electronic Associates Inc (EAI) 8800 analogue computer with 104 amplifiers was ordered from this American company and eventually, in 1965, the "100 volt, all solid-state computer" was installed at Fishermen's Bend. "It is extremely compact and largely because of this, its dynamic accuracy is significantly better than that of other available computers," the 1964-65 Annual Report promised. A photograph from the next year's Report reveals an array of equipment that filled a room."

Malcolm Cumming systematically kept many records of his career including:
* all his notes from his student days at the University of Melbourne;
* notes from his graduate student / lecturing days at Columbia University (late 1950s - 1962);
* materials obtained when researching computers for CSIRO in the 1960s some computer program print-outs with annotations about how well they worked;
* some tape reels, punch cards, etc.;
* design plans for CSIRO Fisherman's Bend
* training materials for training others in computer and simulation methods;
* his research notes for researching home computers in 1970's, 80's etc. (Medfly, Apple, etc.):
* early published examples of the amazing possibilities of desktop publishing (which look very rudimentary now)

Related entries

Published resources

See also

• Beale, Bob, Engineering a Legacy: Memories of the journey of CSIRO Chemical Engineering (Clayton, Victoria: CSIRO Minerals, 2005), 124 pp. pages 48-49. Details