The Pilot ACE was one of the first computers built in the United Kingdom, at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the early 1950s.
It was a preliminary version of the full ACE, which had been designed by Alan Turing. After Turing left NPL (in part because he was disillusioned by the lack of progress on building the ACE) James H. Wilkinson took over the project, Harry Huskey helped with the design. The Pilot ACE ran its first program on May 1...
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The Pilot ACE was one of the first computers built in the United Kingdom, at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the early 1950s.
It was a preliminary version of the full ACE, which had been designed by Alan Turing. After Turing left NPL (in part because he was disillusioned by the lack of progress on building the ACE) James H. Wilkinson took over the project, Harry Huskey helped with the design. The Pilot ACE ran its first program on May 10, 1950 and was demonstrated to the press in December 1950.
Although originally intended as a prototype, it became clear that the machine was a potentially very useful resource, especially given the lack of other computing devices at the time. After some upgrades to make operational use practical, it went into service in late 1951, and saw considerable operational service over the next several years.
It had approximately 800 vacuum tubes, and used mercury delay lines for its main memory. The original size of the latter was 128 32-bit words,...
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