Burroughs 205 Blog

Open Thread - 10/30/09

2009-10-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

This post if for you!

Click on the COMMENTS word just below this line. Feel free to post anything that you would like to correct, clarify or add to the Datatron website.

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Another Datatron Site - Lamar State College

2009-10-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

A number of Datatrons appear to have had "second lives."

W. L. Peavy entered Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, and met his first Datatron -- a 205 that was obtained from United Gas Corporation of Shreveport, Louisiana. He describes the machine as follows:

At Lamar, there were three languages available for use:

1) Machine Language (my favorite),

2) ALGOL 58, (I had no idea Knuth wrote it)

3) Shell Assembler (I never saw this actually run).

There was also a mathematical subroutine library (relocatable) on paper tape. (I've no idea where this came from.)

We had two tape drives, a DataFile, a Cardatron unit, and two IBM punched card units. (I don't recall the models of the IBM units) We had no line printer.

We also had a complete set of blueprints for the machine which really came in handy for trouble-shooting.

I can't imagine a more congenial machine on which to begin learning about computing.

Congenial! Yes, that describes the Datatron in a single word. But at Lamar they also had a DataFile.

Photo courtesy of Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota.

I had never run into anyone who actually used one of these devices. I have heard it described as a "Data fail" because of reliability problems. Peavy continues:

As to the DataFile, we loved it.  But we didn't have all that many tapes for it.  I mean, the lanes were populated but the tapes were defective in large part and we didn't have the money to go out and buy more.  At the time, I was working part-time in the Geophysical Laboratory at Sun Oil Company there in Beaumont, Texas and the seismic tape they used was 3" wide.

Occasionally, they'd retire some tape and one of the gentlemen who'd been with the company forever had a home-built rig that he used to split those tapes in to 1/4" widths for audio.  He modified it to split some 3/4" tapes out for us and we had a small collection of tapes.  But they weren't really precisely cut and so we didn't have good results from them -- but we tried just about anything to avoid spending money.

Our Algol 58 Compiler resided on one DataFile tape and it got used practically to death.

Here's a closer look at the tapes he is describing.

Photo courtesy of Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Executive Profile - Edwin S. McCollister

2009-08-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

..................1954..............................................1960

I have gotten a start on a couple of executive profiles for key managers at ElectroData Corp. First out of the box was Ed McCollister. That is "Edwin S. McCollister" if you are searching the internet.

I have been collecting information about McCollister in a folder ever since I started to build the Datatron website. He seems to be a real character and really got around the industry - IBM, ElectroData, Burroughs, Univac, RCA and back to Burroughs!

Last week, I finally cracked open the ElectroData press release files at the Charles Babbage Institute (I spend every Monday afternoon there. But it would be easy to just move in and only leave for meals. What a collection of files and information!) There in the 1960 P. R. folder was a picture of Ed McCollister. I have been looking for a good shot of him for about a year. I guess Burroughs purged him from their biography files. That got me to work writing the McCollister page on the Datatron site and a couple of days ago I moved it on-line. Enjoy!

I am also collecting items for a Jim Bradburn (James R. Bradburn) page but don't have all I want yet.

A Book Review

2009-03-05T04:04:00.000-08:00

If you are reading this blog, you undoubtedly have an interest in early computers. I have a large collection of books on the subject but recently came across a great addition to my library. The First Computers, History and Architectures - edited by Raul Rojas and Ulf Hashagen is an outstanding work.

This book resulted from papers presented at the International Conference on the History of Computing in Paderborn, Germany, in August 1998. It is notable for containing first-hand or nearly first-hand accounts of developments in America, England and Germany in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

The first part of the book, unfortunately, could put the reader to sleep and result in even a serious student of the subject never reaching "the good stuff." But once I hit Harry Huskey's paper on page 69, I realized that I was seeing first hand reports with details not previously published. Details on both the Eniac and the IAS computer at Princeton filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge.

The parts of the book dealing with both British and German development shed a lot of light on important developments that are frequently omitted or only superficially covered in many works.

Highly recommended!

Bertha Preserves the Datatron

2009-03-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

Shortly after Burroughs acquired ElectroData Corporation in 1956, Burroughs employees Douglas Bolitho and Martin Klein hit on a public relations strategy that will preserve the Datatron name long into the future.

Using well established mathematical rules of music composition, they developed an automated music composition program for the Datatron. Burroughs took one of the resulting compositions, hired popular composer Jack Owens to write lyrics for it and created Push Button Bertha.

(Click to enlarge)

The result was a program and song cited to this day in PhD dissertations, foot-noted in books on electronic music and preserved for posterity.

I realized the significance of this composition when I was contacted in January by Dr. Lutz Neitzert who was preparing a short radio broadcast incorporating the history of "Push Button Bertha."

And did I say "preserved for posterity?" Well, yes!. The Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota contains a copy of the Datatron program that was written by Bolitho and Klein. I am currently building a Datatron emulator in Java. (I've had a previously completed version of the emulator running in Visual Basic but want to make it easier to distribute.) I had thought that the ultimate proof of emulation was to run the Algol 58 compiler. I now realize that I will have to add the music composition program to my test bed.

For readers with sharp eyes and a good imagination, there is a barely visible copy of the Push Button Bertha score at this site.

On the Origins of the B-register

2009-01-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

Dik Leatherdale, the editor of "Resurrection" the journal of the (British) Computer Conservation Society sent me an e-mail linking to additional details about the development and naming of the B-Register.

On my Datatron Homepage, I refer to Harry Huskey bringing this innovation to Pasadena from Manchester, England. In actuality the story is a bit more complicated.

Huskey spent the entire year of 1947 in England working at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) located in Teddington. He was to work on Alan Turing's ACE(Automatic Computing Engine) along with James Hardy (Wilkie) Wilkinson and Michael Woodger. John R. Womersley was Superintendent. Womersley arranged for Huskey to visit other computer projects during January of 1947.

The locations visited included Maurice Wilkes who was building the EDSAC at Cambridge and Fred Williams at Manchester. (This information comes from Huskey's autobiography, Harry D. Huskey, His Story)

Tom Kilburn picks up the story here as he describes a conversation between himself, Fred Williams, Ted Newman and Geoff Tootill at Manchester.

Now out of one conversation between the four people I've mentioned came the index register as being the best new suggestion for the machine; and so we put in the B-tube. It's called the B-tube because we had an accumulator and a control - A and C - and so we called it "B".

Kilburn also mentions a visit from Wilkie Wilkinson from NPL who had in fact been a tutor of his at Cambridge.

Dik Leatherdale notes:

In point of fact, Manchester always referred to "B-lines" as the register contents were stored as lines of dots on the face of a CRT storage device (the Williams Tube). This name persisted long after the demise of CRT storage.

Many thanks to Dik for bringing this additional documentation to my attention.

Burroughs 205 Programming Languages

2008-12-13T09:28:00.000-08:00

Bob Kubic's note below made me think that I should add a page to the Datatron site about the various languages that we used to program the 205. If anyone has suggested additions to this list, please add a comment to this post or e-mail me with them.

I'll be working on this over the next couple of weeks along with a page that features the package design so well-illustrated by Bob's photos.

205 programming languages that I am aware of include:

Machine Language
Shell Symbolic Assembly Program (Shell Oil)
The Burroughs Algebraic Compiler for the 205 (Don Knuth)
Datacode 1 (Saul Rosen)
Dumbo (Bob Kubic)
Machine Language Simulator (Tom Sawyer)

That last one was my own contribution, utilized at the University of Portland for student programs.

Babcock and Wilcox Datatron 205 Remembered

2008-11-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

Update 12/13/08.
Bob shared photos of his B-register package and I posted these at the bottom of the post!

Another early 205 programmer, Bob Kubik, saw the Datatron site and e-mailed these memories:

Babcock and Wilcox in Lynchburg Virginia bought a 205 in 1954 for their Atomic Energy Division. I worked there as a programmer and wrote a compiler for it called "Dumbo". The Dumbo language was used by "open shop" programmers - in part to familiarize them with the computer, but also for another way to get something done when the professional programmers were busy. The machine came bare and even common subroutines like Bessel functions and square root were programmed in house. Lots of folks were doing their own programming languages at that time - before Fortran was available. The 205 was replaced with a Philco 2000 in 1962 or 63, but ran in parallel for a while as things were reprogrammed for the new machine.

The machine was used to design the Indian Point I nuclear power station, the nuclear merchant ship Savanna, The Liquid Fuel Reactor experiment, and various design studies that led to the next generation of reactors.

I still have a decade module from the B register...

(photo courtesy of Bob Kubic)

(photo courtesy of Bob Kubic)

(photo courtesy of Bob Kubic)

(photo courtesy of Bob Kubic)

Another Update to the Datatron 205 Page

2008-10-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

After spending several summer afternoons at the University of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute, I collected enough information to add two more pages to my Datatron 205 website. The Babbage Institute has a fascinating collection of 93 boxes of computer product literature donated from many sources. If you are ever looking for sales brochures from an obscure manufacturer, this collection likely has what you want.

This search page, from the University's library system is the key to locating information in the Babbage Institute. Well, that and a fine staff member such as Stephanie Horowitz who seems to know everything about what they have and where things are located!

The photo above was cropped and extracted from a couple of pictures forwarded to me by N. W. Bell, one of the members of the original Datatron 205 development team. He visited both of the museum Datatron systems this summer and was kind enough to forward photos which I also added to the Datatron page. The system in the California museum seems to be in better condition than the one in Montana, although not nearly as complete.

Voices from the Past

2008-08-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of visitors to the Datatron 205 web page. In the four months since the site has been up, there have been over fifty visitors. These include a few who have sent me e-mails including three programmers who worked on the machine and one person who was on the original design team.

Thanks for the correspondence and do consider sharing your own experiences here. I apologize for the fact that you will need either a Blogger ID or Google ID to post here but my experience with anonymous posting is not good.

I have been continuing my research on the Datatron history story via the papers residing at the University of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute. I'll be continuing to update the site and keep you posted on progress here.

Tom

A Place for Burroughs 205 Tales From The Past

2008-03-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally done it!

For years, I have saved my old Burroughs 205 manuals, Cardatron coding forms and other memorabilia with the thought that I would someday publish a magazine article or possibly even a book about this marvelous old first generation computer. I collected references in books and magazines and even references on that new-fangled Internet thing.

So I finally got started on the book. But since the book deserves input from a lot more people, I thought I had better at least start with a web page that gives an overview of B205 history. So that is now out there to live forever in Cyberspace!

And, here is a blog for comments.

Do you have experience with the Burroughs 205? Or with Electrodata Corporation? Or maybe you just lived in the neighborhood of the facilities in Pasadena. Post comments here.