Join the CW Heritage SIG for a full day exploring the history of computing including a special talk on the EDSAC Replica Project from Andrew Herbert, chair of The National Museum of Computing (TNMoC).

TNMoC is home to the world's largest collection of working historic computers. Visitors can follow the development of computing from the Turing-Welchman Bombe and Colossus of the 1940s through the large systems and mainframes of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, to the rise of personal computing, mobile computing and the internet.
More information on the museum can be found at https://www.tnmoc.org

The EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) Replica Project aims to reconstruct one of the most important early British digital computers. Designed in 1947 by a team lead by Maurice Wilkes, the original EDSAC computer operated for almost 10 years, starting from its first successful program run on 6th May 1949, at the Cambridge University Mathematical Laboratory. It is generally accepted that the EDSAC was the first practical general purpose stored program electronic computer.

The Replica Project aims to build an authentic working reconstruction of the EDSAC computer (taking into account the availability of components and materials and modern safety standards!) - a difficult task given the lack of surviving documentation and original hardware. A major part of the project has been some serious detective work by the volunteer team (led by Andrew Herbert) to deduce the design of the computer from the limited material available, the memories of people who built and worked with the original, and photographic clues. Luckily, EDSAC was built out of standard building blocks (chassis modules) making their task (a little) easier.

Supplementary objectives of the project include acquiring sufficient spares to keep the machine running for the next 25 years, and training a new generation of volunteers, unfamiliar with 1940s valve technology, to run, demonstrate and maintain it for the foreseeable future.
For more information go to: https://www.tnmoc.org/edsac

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