Picture of Bell Labs Model V, circa 1947
Relay equipment room of the Model V Computer installed at BRL[1]

The Model V was among the early[2] electromechanical[3] general purpose computers,[4][5][6] designed by George Stibitz and built by Bell Telephone Laboratories, operational in 1946.

Only two machines were built: first one was installed at National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, later NASA), the second (1947) at the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL).[7][8]

Construction

Design was started in 1944.[9] The tape-controlled (Harvard architecture)[4][10] machine had two (design allowed for a total of six) processors ("computers")[11] that could operate independently,[5][12][13] an early form of multiprocessing.[4][14]

The Model V weighed about 10 short tons (9.1 t).[9][15]

Significance

Model VI

Built and used internally by Bell Telephone Laboratories, operational in 1949.

Simplified version of the Model V (only one processor,[23] about half the relays) but with several improvements,[5][24][25] including one of the earliest use of the microcode.[26][27][28]

Bibliography

Further reading

References

  1. ^ "Bell Labs Model V, circa 1947 · Gallery". gallery.lib.umn.edu. Retrieved 2018-09-07.
  2. ^ a b Williams, Samuel Byron (1959). Digital Computing Systems. McGraw-Hill. p. 89.
  3. ^ a b Printed Series. University of Alabama Bureau of Business Research. 1954. p. 5.
  4. ^ a b c d e Randell, B. (2012). The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 239, 352. ISBN 9783642961458. [...] IBM SSEC [...] was hardly a stored program computer [...] being basically a tape-controlled machine in the tradition of the Harvard Mark I or the Bell Laboratories Model V.
  5. ^ a b c d Belzer, Jack; Holzman, Albert G.; Kent, Allen (1976). Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology: Volume 3 - Ballistics Calculations to Box-Jenkins Approach to Time Series Analysis and Forecasting. CRC Press. p. 200. ISBN 9780824722531.
  6. ^ a b Bullynck 2015.
  7. ^ Ceruzzi 1983, p. 95.
  8. ^ Datamation 1967, p. 47.
  9. ^ a b Alt & 21 1948, p. 1.
  10. ^ Tomash 2008, p. 37.
  11. ^ Ceruzzi 1983, p. 96.
  12. ^ Open Library.
  13. ^
  14. ^ a b Dasgupta, Subrata (2014-01-07). It Began with Babbage: The Genesis of Computer Science. Oxford University Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780199309429.
  15. ^ Irvine 2001, p. 25.
  16. ^ Ceruzzi 1983, p. 98.
  17. ^ Thompson, Thomas M. (1983). From Error-Correcting Codes Through Sphere Packings to Simple Groups. Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–17. ISBN 9780883850374.
  18. ^ Knuth, Donald E. (2014). Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms. Addison-Wesley Professional. p. 378 (electronic edition). ISBN 9780321635761.
  19. ^ Irvine 2001, pp. 25–26.
  20. ^ Datamation 1967, p. 49.
  21. ^ Alt & 21 1948, p. 3-4.
  22. ^ "Relay computers of George Stibitz". history-computer.
  23. ^ Ceruzzi 1983, p. 95-96, 99.
  24. ^ Irvine 2001, pp. 26–27.
  25. ^ Kaisler 2016, pp. 36–37.
  26. ^ Reilly, Edwin D. (2003). Milestones in Computer Science and Information Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 28. ISBN 9781573565219. Model VI macro.
  27. ^ Ceruzzi, Paul E.; Ceruzzi, Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing Paul E. (2003). A History of Modern Computing. MIT Press. p. 149. ISBN 9780262532037. Model VI Wilkes.
  28. ^ Reilly, Edwin D.; Ralston, Anthony; Hemmendinger, David (2000). Encyclopedia of Computer Science. Second part of the text: search (with quotes) for "stored program electronic computers.". Nature Publishing Group. p. 136. ISBN 9781561592487. The Model VI did have an ability to execute short sequences of arithmetic with single commands punched on the tape, a concept new at the time and one rediscovered and named later as "macro" commands. It interpreted these commands through ingenious electromagnetic circuits that, in effect, "microprogrammed" the machine. It is not historically misleading to use that term, since those features were seen and noticed by Maurice Wilkes (q.v.), who later developed that concept for stored program electronic computers.

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