Tom Kilburn CBE, FRS (August 11, 1921 - January 17, 2001) was an English engineer. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams Tube and the first stored-program computer in the world, the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), while working at the University of Manchester.
Kilburn was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire and graduated in mathematics from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, pursuing a course compressed to two years following the outbre...
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Tom Kilburn CBE, FRS (August 11, 1921 - January 17, 2001) was an English engineer. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams Tube and the first stored-program computer in the world, the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), while working at the University of Manchester.
Kilburn was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire and graduated in mathematics from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, pursuing a course compressed to two years following the outbreak of World War II. On graduation, he was recruited by C.P. Snow for unspecified secret work and found himself on a crash course in electronics before being posted to the Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern to work on radar under F.C. Williams. In 1943 he married Irene Marsden and the couple went on to raise a son and a daughter.
Kilburn's wartime work inspired his enthusiasm for some form of electronic computer. The principal technical barrier to such a development at that time was the lack of any practical means of storage...
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