CSIRAC

Trevor Pearcey, Mastern Beard were two of a growing group o young people who went to college either right out of high school or with a little break in the for World War. By 1949 these computers already showed promise on a number of fronts. They showed their value in scientific research and Pearcey and Beard were part of a growing group of young computer science students (or math or philosophy) went home and tinkered. Each changed their own little piece of the world as they went. Pearcey moved to Australia after the war and went to the University of Melbourne.

CSIRAC stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Search Automatic Computer. The 7 tone beauty ran its first program in 1949. It used 2,000 valves to process up to 768 20-bit words of a program. It could read standard punch cards or paper tape and the console provided a status. One developer, Geoff Hill, wrote a programming language for it and other wrote a BASIC. little operating system for it that he called A. There