Institute of Computer Science

Last updated

University of London Institute of Computer Science
Active1950s–1974
Location
44–45 Gordon Square London
,
United Kingdom

The University of London Institute of Computer Science (ICS) was an Institute based in London in England. The institute was founded by the University of London to support and provide academic research, postgraduate teaching, computer services and network services. It was founded as the University of London Computer Unit at some point in the 1950s, changed its name to the Institute of Computer Science in the 1960s, and dissolved in 1974. [1]

Contents

History

The exact date of foundation remains to be established, but the Institute appears to have already existed by the 1950s. Richard Buckingham was Director, first of the Computer Unit and later of the Institute of Computer Science, from 1957 to 1973. [2]

The name of Institute had been given by 1962, when John Buxton became one of its lecturers. [3] It was dissolved in 1974 and its Director moved to Birkbeck College. Some of the material in this description of the institute is derived from a history of the School of Computer Science & Information System at that college. [4]

Teaching

The Master of Science (MSc) in Computer Science of the institute was one of the first courses in the subject. [5] Barnett also ran informal courses, at the Institute and at the London College of Printing, to explain computer typesetting to officials of the trade unions concerned with the printing industry. [6]

A number of distinguished software and hardware engineers and scientists taught and supervised the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees awarded by the institute (see Staff above). Prominent graduates of the Institute include – Michael Newman, Professor of Information Systems, Manchester Business School. [7] Nick Fiddian, Professor and Head of Department of Computer Science, Cardiff University, [8] and Gautam Mitra, OptiRisk Systems Ltd, Professor of Computational Optimisation, Brunel University. [9]

Computer Services

The Institute provided early mainframe computer services on an Atlas computer, as the University of London Atlas Computing Service. The Atlas Computer (Manchester) was an early transistor machine and only three ever existed. A number of pioneering programmes were developed on the ICS Atlas including the CPL1 Compiler, A General Fourier Synthesis Program, A Computer Technique for Optimizing the Sites and Heights of Transmission Line Towers and even an early work in computing for English Change Ringing. All of these are described in papers under Research above. When the Institute closed, services were taken over by the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) [10] although ULCC did initially run in parallel with the Atlas service.

Networking

The Institute provided batch and interactive communications. The main services were the first UK Arpanet node and Remote Job Entry (RJE) to the IBM 360/195 [11] at the Rutherford Laboratory in Oxfordshire. [12] The Arpanet node was the first in Europe and is therefore the first place where what became the Internet was available in Europe. The RJE service using a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-9 emulating an IBM 1130 (presumably a HASP workstation) was the first remote user of the 360/195, [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Brooks</span> American computer scientist (1931–2022)

Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the OS/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about those experiences in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JANET</span> Academic computer network in the United Kingdom

Janet is a high-speed network for the UK research and education community provided by Jisc, a not-for-profit company set up to provide computing support for education. It serves 18 million users and is the busiest National Research and Education Network in Europe by volume of data carried. Previously, Janet was a private, UK-government funded organisation, which provided the JANET computer network and related collaborative services to UK research and education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Time-sharing</span> Computing resource shared by concurrent users

In computing, time-sharing is the concurrent sharing of a computing resource among many tasks or users by giving each task or user a small slice of processing time. This quick switch between tasks or users gives the illusion of simultaneous execution. It enables multi-tasking by a single user or enables multiple-user sessions.

In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into short messages in fixed format, i.e. packets, that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the packet to its destination, where the payload is extracted and used by an operating system, application software, or higher layer protocols. Packet switching is the primary basis for data communications in computer networks worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARPANET</span> Early packet switching network (1969–1990)

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense.

Wallace John Eckert was an American astronomer, who directed the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University which evolved into the research division of IBM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birkbeck, University of London</span> Public university in England

Birkbeck, University of London, is a research university located in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. Established in 1823 as the London Mechanics' Institute by its founder Sir George Birkbeck and its supporters- Jeremy Bentham, J. C. Hobhouse and Henry Brougham- Birkbeck is one of the few universities to specialise in evening higher education in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerrit Blaauw</span> Dutch computer scientist (1924–2018)

Gerrit Anne "Gerry" Blaauw was a Dutch computer scientist, known as one of the principal designers of the IBM System/360 line of computers, together with Fred Brooks, Gene Amdahl, and others.

Remote job entry, or Remote Batch, is the procedure for sending requests for non-interactive data processing tasks (jobs) to mainframe computers from remote workstations, and by extension the process of receiving the output from such jobs at a remote workstation.

Peter Thomas Kirstein was a British computer scientist who played a role in the creation of the Internet. He made the first internetworking connection on the ARPANET in 1973, by providing a link to British academic networks, and was instrumental in defining and implementing TCP/IP alongside Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.

Glen Jacob Culler was an American professor of electrical engineering and an important early innovator in the development of the Internet. Culler joined the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) mathematics faculty in 1959 and helped put the campus in the forefront of what would become the field of computer science. He later served as director of the UCSB Computer Center and professor in the College of Engineering and extended his revolutionary view of the role of computers to include their use in the classroom. He left UCSB to work in industry and establish his own company, called Culler-Harrison, in 1969. Culler-Harrison became CHI Systems, and later, Culler Scientific.

Kathleen Hylda Valerie Booth was a British computer scientist and mathematician who wrote the first assembly language and designed the assembler and autocode for the first computer systems at Birkbeck College, University of London. She helped design three different machines including the ARC, SEC, and APE(X)C.

Michael Peter Barnett was a British theoretical chemist and computer scientist. He developed mathematical and computer techniques for quantum chemical problems, and some of the earliest software for several other kinds of computer application. After his early days in London, Essex and Lancashire, he went to King's College, London, in 1945, the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern in 1953, IBM United Kingdom in 1955, the University of Wisconsin Department of Chemistry in 1957, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Solid State and Molecular Theory Group in 1958.

Remote Spooling Communications Subsystem or RSCS is a subsystem of IBM's VM/370 operating system which accepts files transmitted to it from local or remote system and users and transmits them to destination local or remote users and systems. RSCS also transmits commands and messages among users and systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edson Hendricks</span> American computer scientist

Edson C. Hendricks, an IBM computer scientist, developed RSCS, fundamental software that powered the world’s largest network prior to the Internet and which directly influenced both Internet development and user acceptance of networking between independently managed organizations. Within IBM, the resulting network later became known as VNET and grew to 4000 nodes. In the academic community, VNET formed the base for BITNET which extended to 500 organizations and 3,000 nodes. VNET was also the networking design underpinning EARN in Europe, and NETNORTH in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franklin H. Westervelt</span> American computer scientist

Franklin Herbert Westervelt was an American engineer, computer scientist, and educator at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. Westervelt received degrees in Mathematics, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He attained his PhD in 1961. He was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan and an Associate Director at the U-M Computing Center. He was involved in early studies on how to use computers in engineering education.

Richard Arthur Buckingham FBCS FRSA was an English particle physicist, mathematician and computer scientist long on the staff of the University of London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Utah School of Computing</span> School in University of Utah

The Kahlert School of Computing is a school within the College of Engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM System/360 Model 91</span> High-end IBM computer model from 1960s

The IBM System/360 Model 91 was announced in 1964 as a competitor to the CDC 6600. Functionally, the Model 91 ran like any other large-scale System/360, but the internal organization was the most advanced of the System/360 line, and it was the first IBM computer to support out-of-order instruction execution. It ran OS/360 as its operating system. It was designed to handle high-speed data processing for scientific applications. This included space exploration, theoretical astronomy, sub-atomic physics and global weather forecasting.

References

  1. ↑ Its status as a pioneer institution serving research, teaching and computing services has not been widely recognised. This entry is only the beginning of a description. The Institute deserves a full history which should preferably be written while many of its staff and graduates are still alive.
  2. ↑ 'BUCKINGHAM, Prof. Richard Arthur', in Who Was Who (London: A & C Black), online edition by Oxford University Press, December 2012. Retrieved 18 January 2014
  3. ↑ Campbell-Kelly, Martin (12 November 2009). "Obituary John Buxton". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
  4. ↑ "Birkbeck, University of London, School of Computer Science & Information Systems, A Short History" (PDF).
  5. ↑ Samet, P. (1998). "The Evolution of Computer Science Teaching and Research in the UK" (PDF). Proc. Computers in Europe: Past, Present and Future. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 3 July 2010.
  6. ↑ Michael P. Barnett, Computer typesetting, experiments and prospects, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1965.
  7. ↑ "Profile". 15 May 2010. Archived from the original on 15 May 2010.
  8. ↑ "Obituary: Professor Nicholas John Fiddian". 2 July 2011. Archived from the original on 2 July 2011.
  9. ↑ "About: The Team". www.optirisk-systems.com.
  10. ↑ "A brief history of ULCC".
  11. ↑ "IBM 360/195". Archived from the original on 10 March 2005.
  12. ↑ "LONDON NODE IS NOW UP".
  13. ↑ "Rutherford Laboratory Annual Report 1973 Computing Services".

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.