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TREAC or the TRE Automatic Computer was one of the first British computers, and in the world.
It was developed by the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Worcestershire. [1] The University of Manchester had been developing some of the first computers in the late 1940s and early 1950s. From 1947, the TRE in Worcestershire had been developing computers. The main part of the Manchester team had previously been at TRE. TRE had produced much of the electronics for the United Kingdom (for radar) during World War II, and came under the Ministry of Supply.
TREAC was developed in the early 1950s. TREAC produced the first computer synthesised music. It ran its first computer program in 1953; from 1958 different sorts of computer programs could be written. All information was fed in and fed out on punched paper tape. TREAC was a parallel computer, the first in the UK.
TREAC was switched off in 1962, and replaced with the Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer (RREAC, the UK's first solid state computer).
CORAL, short for Computer On-line Real-time Applications Language is a programming language originally developed in 1964 at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE), Malvern, Worcestershire, in the United Kingdom. The R was originally for "radar", not "real-time". It was influenced primarily by JOVIAL, and thus ALGOL, but is not a subset of either.
The Royal Radar Establishment was a research center in Malvern, Worcestershire in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1953 as the Radar Research Establishment by the merger of the Air Ministry's Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) and the British Army's Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE). It was given its new name after a visit by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Both names were abbreviated to RRE. In 1976 the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE), involved in communications research, joined the RRE to form the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE).
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes was a British computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers and invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits. At the time of his death, Wilkes was an Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge.
The Manchester Baby, also called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), was the first electronic stored-program computer, was built at the University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.
Tom Kilburn was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science.
The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was a British early electronic serial stored-program computer designed by Alan Turing. It was based on the earlier Pilot ACE. It led to the MOSAIC computer, the Bendix G-15, and other computers.
Sir Frederic Calland Williams,, known as F.C. Williams or Freddie Williams, was an English engineer, a pioneer in radar and computer technology.
The Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) was the main United Kingdom research and development organization for radio navigation, radar, infra-red detection for heat seeking missiles, and related work for the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II and the years that followed. It was regarded as "the most brilliant and successful of the English wartime research establishments" under "Rowe, who saw more of the English scientific choices between 1935 and 1945 than any single man."
Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, they were particularly well known for their industrial electrical equipment such as generators, steam turbines, switchgear, transformers, electronics and railway traction equipment. Metrovick holds a place in history as the builders of the first commercial transistor computer, the Metrovick 950, and the first British axial-flow jet engine, the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2. Their factory in Trafford Park, Manchester, was for most of the 20th century one of the biggest and most important heavy engineering facilities in Britain and the world.
Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd was an early computer company of the 1950s–60s in the United Kingdom. It traced its descent from a firm of instrument makers founded by William Elliott in London around 1804. The research laboratories were originally set up in 1946 at Borehamwood and the first Elliott 152 computer appeared in 1950.
The FP-6000 was a second-generation mainframe computer developed and built by Ferranti-Packard, the Canadian division of Ferranti, in the early 1960s. It is particularly notable for supporting multitasking, being one of the first commercial machines to do so. Only six FP-6000s were sold before the computer division of Ferranti-Packard was sold off by Ferranti's UK headquarters in 1963, the FP-6000 becoming the basis for the mid-range machines of the ICT 1900, which sold into the thousands in Europe.
Philip Mayne Woodward was a British mathematician, radar engineer and horologist. He achieved notable success in all three fields. Before retiring, he was a Deputy Chief Scientific Officer at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) of the British Ministry of Defence in Malvern, Worcestershire.
Royal Air Force Defford or more simply RAF Defford is a former Royal Air Force station located 1.1 miles (1.8 km) northwest of Defford, Worcestershire, England.
Geoff C. Tootill was an electronic engineer and computer scientist who worked in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Manchester with Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn developing the Manchester Baby, "the world's first wholly electronic stored-program computer".
The Harwell CADET was the first fully transistorised computer in Europe, and may have been the first fully transistorised computer in the world.
The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester from the Manchester Baby. Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949.
Albert Percival Rowe, CBE, often known as Jimmy Rowe or A. P. Rowe, was a radar pioneer and university vice-chancellor. A British physicist and senior research administrator, he played a major role in the development of radar before and during World War II.
Kathleen Booth 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.
The Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer, or the RREAC, was an early solid-state computer in 1962. It was made with transistors; many of Britain's previous experimental computers used the thermionic valve, also known as a vacuum tube.
Edmund ("Ted") Harry Cooke-Yarborough was the lead designer of the Harwell Dekatron, one of the world's early electronic computers and also a pioneer of radar.