An Overview of Some Computer Conservation Society Projects

Wednesday 12th May 2010, 6:30 pm.

Speaker: Christopher Burton.

University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB - map (click on Informatics Forum in the list of buildings).

Synopsis

This talk will cover four current projects being undertaken by the Computer Conservation Society. This includes the Elliott 401 and the Harwell Dekatron Computer. The speaker will say a little about the origin of each project, its history, who the project team are, a few anecdotes, and current status of the project.

About the speaker

Christopher P. Burton graduated in Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham in the early 1950s. He is a Chartered Engineer, and a Fellow of the BCS and IET. He worked on computer hardware, software and systems developments in Ferranti Ltd and then ICT and ICL from 1957 until 1989, nearly all based in the Manchester area. He is a founder member of the Computer Conservation Society and led the team responsible for building a replica of the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, the Baby. For this work he was awarded an honorary MSc by the University of Manchester, the first Lovelace Medal by the British Computer Society, and the Chief Executive's Gold Award for Excellence by ICL. He lives in Shropshire and spends a lot of time indulging in practical computer history matters.