Department of Computer Science
A Timeline of Manchester Computing
Manchester Built Machines
1948 SSEM, the "Baby" - World's first stored program computer.
1949 Manchester Mark 1 - First machine with
fast random-access two-level store (RAM + Disc).
1951 Ferranti Mark 1 - First
commercially-available machine.
1953 Manchester Transistor Computer - The first computer to use transistors
instead of valves.
1954 Meg - Support for hardware floating point. Manufactured by
Ferranti as the Mercury.
1962 Atlas - World's fastest computer when it was built, included virtual
memory. The largest version at
Chilton had a massive
48k of memory. First British computer to be used remotely via data links.
1974 MU5 - Architecture used by ICL for their series 2900 mainframes.
1982-1987 MU6 - Last of the Manchester machines, it produced similar
performance to MU5 at a fraction of the cost, and ran the MUSS multi-user
operating system.
More detailed time chart.
Main Hall
Copyright The University of Manchester 1996, 2003