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Talk:Manchester computers

	Manchester computers has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassessit.
Article milestones Date Process Result September 23, 2010 Good article nominee Listed
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 1, 2009. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that a series of innovative computers, including the first transistor computer and the world's fastest computer, were produced by a small team working at Manchester University between 1947 and 1977?

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Manchester computers/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ironholds (talk) 14:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lede[edit]

• "to produce a commercial version, the Ferranti Mark 1. The resulting machine, the Ferranti Mark 1" - duplication of words and links. I'd suggest "to produce a commercial version. The resulting machine, the Ferranti Mark 1.."
• "led eventually " - "eventually led"
• "establishing it as the world's first stored-program computer." - probably needs a citation.

Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM)[edit]

• I'd suggest linking "long ton".

Transistor Computer[edit]

• "Two of Kilburn's team, R. L. Grimsdale and D. C. Webb were assigned" - "Two of Kilburn's team, R. L. Grimsdale and D. C. Webb, were assigned"

Muse and Atlas[edit]

• "Development of MUSE – a name derived from microsecond engine – began at the university in 1956. The aim was to build a computer that could operate at processing speeds approaching one microsecond per instruction, one million instructions per second. Mu (or µ) is a prefix in the SI and other systems of units denoting a factor of 10−6 (one millionth)." - may need a cite, but I could just be being pedantic.

Other[edit]

• Any use for more pictures?
• Is there any coverage (that you know of) of the program as a whole?

• Replies

Thanks for the review.

• I've added a citation for "world's first stored-program computer" and made the other two changes suggested for the lead.
• "long ton" now linked
• I've added the comma after "R. L. Grimsdale and D. C. Webb".
• I've added a citation for the fact that development of the Atlas began in 1956, but not for Mu (or µ), on the basis that's just about as close to general knowledge as I can imagine.
• The only other images I've come across would have to be under fair-use licences, which would be justifiable in an article about the specific computer, but I'm dubious can be justified here.
• It wasn't really a programme, more a series of programmes over the 30 years.

Malleus Fatuorum 00:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cool beans; passing. As always, let me know when you have another thing at GAN or FAC. Ironholds (talk) 12:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reference 30 to the IEEE Annals (V21, 1999) is attached to text about MU6. However the reference does not mention specific papers. There are in fact two papers that are relevant but both are about MU5 and don't mention MU6. One, by Jeff Rohl, is a retrospective on the design of the MU5 instruction set, the other, by Roland Ibbett (i.e. me, signed in as Eqanius), is a retrospective on the MU5 project. There are lots of direct references about MU5 that could be included. The original proposal was "A System Design Proposal" presented at the IFIP Congress in Edinburgh in 1968 by T. Kilburn, D. Morris, J.S. Rohl and F.H. Sumner and published by North Holland in "Information Processing 68" in 1969. The most complete description of the project is "The MU5 Computer System" by Derrick Morris and Roland N Ibbett, published in 1979 by Macmillan (ISBN 0-333-25749-9) but now out of print. A summary paper was published in CACM in 1978: "The Development of the MU5 Computer System" by R.N. Ibbett and P.C.Capon, and of course there is the Annals paper ("The University of Manchester MU5 Project, R.N. Ibbett, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 21, pp 24-33, Jan-Mar 1999).

As to MU6, there was, in addition to MU6-P and MU6-G, a small prototype of MU6-V, built as a PhD project by N.P. Topham and reported in "MU6V: A Parallel Vector Processing Unit, R.N. Ibbett, P.C. Capon and N.P. Topham, 12th International Symposium on Computer Architecture, 1985.

I don't think it's appropriate for me to edit the Manchester computers page to include this material so I offer it to Malleus Fatuorum for consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eqanius (talk • contribs) 08:37, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above GA review asks "Is there any coverage (that you know of) of the program as a whole?" In response, I attempted to add two references that discuss the program as a whole. But apparently I messed up the formatting or something, and the references were deleted.[1] How can we make this article better by adding coverage of the program as a whole? --DavidCary (talk) 16:16, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't offer any new material on "the program as a whole", simply added two external links. Eric Corbett 16:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Should his contributions and involvement be mentioned in this article? The Alan Turing article states "In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Laboratory at the University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers" citing a book I do not have access to, Leavitt, David (2007). The man who knew too much: Alan Turing and the invention of the computer. Phoenix. ISBN 978-0-7538-2200-5.

Any thoughts? His significance in CS in general probably warrants at least a name drop in the article in my opinion... 86.8.54.48 (talk) 06:26, 13 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How many valves did Meg and Mercury have ? Size ? power ? any architecture changes from the Mark 1 ? - Rod57 (talk) 13:16, 30 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This article heavily relies on the Lavington 1998 book, and has two refs to his 1980 book. Here's an online (1980) source by Lavington Early British Computers - THE STORY OF VINTAGE COMPUTERS AND THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT THEM that we could also reference but can anyone say how closely it matches the 1998 or 1980 books ?
1980-online Chapter 9 says

"The Manchester University Mark II computer, nicknamed MEG, was 20 times faster than Mark I yet consumed less than half the electrical power. It first worked in May 1954." - Rod57 (talk) 14:11, 30 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]