The pages on the Baby, Manchester Mark 1 and Ferranti Mark 1 are a comprehensive revision of the original, pre-1998, pages by Joanne Allison (based on the booklet "TheBirth of the Baby" by Dr. I.D.Cottam) and Kulwinder Gill (Virtual Museum).
I have drawn extensively from the documents and literature written at the time, a selection of which is reproduced in these pages. An even bigger selection is available on the CD-ROM.
Valuable general sources were the Kilburn-Piggott Biography of F.C. Williams, and the book "A History of Manchester Computers" by Professor Simon Lavington, a second edition of which was published in 1998 (which I almost know by heart, having done the initial proofreading when it was being retyped by Suzanne Briscoe of the 1998 Conference Office!).
I am very grateful to Professors Tom Kilburn and D.B.G. Edwards for their regular advice and answering of questions. However apart from Dai looking through early material, little extended beyond the original pages, these pages have not been formally checked by them. I may or may not try and prevail upon them to do so.
I have also acquired knowledge from the WWW (though you can't believe everything you read there!!), and I am particularly grateful for Andrew Hodges' Turing Web Site for providing the basic Turing story, and to Andrew himself for helping in the difficult task of trying to give a fair account of Turing's (and Max Newman's) contribution to the Mark 1 project.
I feel guilty that I did not take the opportunity during the Celebrations Week
of questioning particular members of the unique coming together of so many
of the pioneers, to try and resolve uncertainties and increase my understanding
of events. But spare time was limited and I was basically shattered by
all the work put into the preparations for the
events.
R.B.E.Napper