From Turings Christopher to my Type 22

When I came out of the Royal Navy - last ship Type 22 Battleaxe .. I went to work at Ferranti Computer Systems Limited on Weapons Simulators ...

Turing ... the Enigma Code Breaker .... and inventor of Christopher ....was involved in Ferranti's earliest Computers. ( The Ferranti Mark 1, Nimrod etc )

Alan Turing in the Science Museum

Sixty-eight years ago, Alan Turing left Manchester for the summer. As part of his holiday he paid a visit to the Science Museum in South Kensington. For the 1951 Festival of Britain they had agreed to display a new wonder: the Ferranti Mark I, the world's first commercially available electronic computer. But, like most computer installations ever since, it couldn't be made to work in time. So Ferranti created a last-minute replacement, the probably more crowd-pleasing wonder of the Nimrod. Nimrod was the first game with an electronic display, and played a passable version of the matchstick game Nim. When Turing visited, he supposedly managed to both beat Nimrod at its own game, and then to break it, all the while keeping an eye on the attractiveness of the display attendants (he approved).

It's no surprise that Turing could hack the Nimrod. His job in Manchester was as the resident, indeed the first, software specialist at the University, and, I discovered in research for my recent book, as a consultant for Nimrod’s maker, the electrical company Ferranti. Nimrod and (eventually) the Mark I, were constructed up the Oldham Road in Moston, so I felt justified in including the Nimrod story in the book, Alan Turing’s Manchester. And it was in MOSI in Manchester, in a windowless basement, that I found a hitherto unknown account confirming the making of Nimrod as a Mark I replacement. That document was part of the vast Ferranti archive that is one of MOSI’s lesser known treasures. The MOSI archive also holds the photographic prints that mark the start of computer marketing. Where today David Bowie or FKA Twigs hunch over their Macbooks in black and white, in 1951 it was Alan Turing, in his role as programming expert, who leaned over the Mark I console to sell the machine of immense, if never quite specified, promise. ?

The Ferranti FM1600B was a rack mounted computer system.

The FERRANTI FM1600 CPU was designed for use in large centralised computer installations in major warships and was at the time when the brochure came out the most powerful in the Ferranti range. It is a 24-bit general-purpose, real-time central processor and is an integrated circuit version of the F1600 machine, which has been in service with the (UK) Royal Navy for many years and uses the same range of proven software.The FM1600B was used in much military equipment, especially on board ships of the UK Royal Navy, other Navies as well as in trainers, for instance in the Netherlands AA Tank Training System (Mech LUA).

Turing made computers play music .... and also games and videos ....

Manchester .. and Ferranti in particular ..... was the Silicon Valley of the time ...

The Evolution of Flight Simulators.