This Gallery covers the Manchester machines of 1948-51 and the 1998 celebrations (see overview). Pictures relating to the later Manchester computers up to 1975, i.e. MEG and Mercury, the Transistor Computer, Atlas, and MU5 are shown separately.
There are 8 sets of pictures, the first from c. 1949, the second from c. 1951, and the rest from 1998:
In this page:
We are very grateful to Mike Koiston, Mohammed Khalil, Anne Worthington and others who have provided the photographs for the Celebrations Week (see further details).
Navigation : Each entry on the above list links to an index below on this page. The header of each such index points to a page containing all the photos in its set (which is headed by a local version of the Index). The description of each photo in the index links to a copy of just that photo on a separate page. This is for obvious reasons to allow quicker viewing where you only want to see one or two in the set. The Index header gives an approximate size of the page containing all the photos in the set.
Pictures not yet included are indicated by the lack of a link.
In the 1998 pictures, which include a lot of people, only
some of whom are identified,
the following codes are sometimes used to identify the relationship of named
people to the Department of Computer Science (or Electrical Engineering before
1964):
Note that there are no photographs of the original Baby as such.
By the time any photos are available, the Baby was already evolving into the Manchester Mark 1. However the Left Hand side of the Manchester Mark 1 changed very little in external appearance from the Baby. It is almost true that the photos of the Replica Baby are the most accurate pictures of the original.
See also the story, and the Turing-Brooker manual.
A working replica of the "Baby" was built as part of the 1998 celebrations, using authentic parts as far as possible, with the detail of its construction kept as close to the original as possible.
The 1998 Celebrations were formally opened on Wednesday 17 June with an Event in the Bridgewater Hall (see description and programme).
The programme for Thursday June 18th reviewed the achievement of the Baby and the Mark 1, and the continuing pioneering computer developments that followed in the intervening years at the University of Manchester.
The programme for Friday June 19th looked at state-of-the-art research today at Manchester and elsewhere, and looked towards the future.
We have not got pictures of all the speakers (apologies to Peter Stow, Keith Bellamy and John Mashey; Mike Brady can be viewed at the Launch Event, and John Gurd and Steve Furber on our Departmental Research pages!)
This was held on the evening of Friday June 19th using a marquee outside the entrance to the IT building. Many past and present members of the department attended.
The Department held an Open Day on Saturday June 20th. Manchester Computing (on the ground floor of the Computer Science Building) also held an Open Day the same day.
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