PhD: The EDSAC Replica Project

The EDSAC Replica Project is building a replica of the Cambridge EDSAC Computer of 1949 for display at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, England. EDSAC was an early example of an electronic general purpose stored program computer, and the first to be run as service machine for users. Programs run on EDSAC contributed to the Nobel Prize winning work of John Kendrew on the molecular structure of myoglobin and Martin Ryle on the use of synthetic aperture radio astronomy.

The project requires a considerable amount of research and development before construction can commence: there is no complete “blueprint” to follow; instead, the design is being reconstructed from photographs and notebooks giving at best an incomplete record: the techniques of using thermionic valves to build digital circuits is a “lost art” and a “serial machine” the logical design of EDSAC is quite different to that of modern parallel machines.

In his talk, Andrew will cover the history of EDSAC, the machine architecture, and progress to date on constructing the replica machine.

Speaker Details

A computer scientist, Herbert is former Chairman of Microsoft Research, for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. His research interests include networks, operating systems, programming languages and distributed computing.

Prior to joining Microsoft Research in 2001, he was Director of Advanced Technology at Citrix Systems Inc. (1998), Founder of Digitivity Inc. (1996) and Founder of ANSA. In 1985 Herbert was a faculty member in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge where he worked with Roger Needham and Maurice Wilkes on seminal developments in operating systems, local area networks (LANs) and distributed computing. In 1979 Herbert helped Needham and Wilkes edit “The Cambridge CAP Computer and Its Operating System,” and in 1982 he co-authored “The Cambridge Distributed Computing System” with Needham. In 2003, Herbert co-edited a monograph of papers written in tribute to Needham, “Computer Systems: Theory, Technology and Applications,” with Karen Spärck Jones.

In the 2010 honours list Herbert was awarded an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to computer science. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, a visiting professor at University College London, a member of St. John’s College Cambridge, and a liveryman of the City of London Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

In 1975 he graduated from the University of Leeds with a B.Sc. in computational science and in 1978 with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in computer science.

Now retired, Herbert is the director of a project to construct a replica of the pioneering Cambridge EDSAC computer as it was in May 1947 when it ran its first program. The project is sponsored by Cambridge University and the Computer Conservation Society and the replica will be constructed at The National Museum of Computing.

Date:
Speakers:
Andrew Herbert