Manchester Mark I: Kilburn and Williams

F.C. Williams and Tom Kilburn at the console of the Manchester Mark I c1949

• Tom Kilburn is on the left, F.C. Williams on the right. You can see the monitor CRT, propped up on a cardboard box (faithfully duplicated in the Replica!) - presumably they had at one time expected to use a 12" monitor rather than a 6". Underneath is the bank of 8 * 5 press buttons for setting ones in a word, and then various other switches underneath, in particular for setting the page and line for display on the monitor, and controlling the operation of the machine. .
  
• George Baker was told that the microphone for the drum room intercom can be seen in this picture to the left of Williams' mouth. Bob Geatrell thought that it was Dai Edwards who said this at the 70th Anniversary event. Simon Lavington confirmed that it is the microphone (emails to Jim Miles July 2024). For more information on the drum store and intercom see $set205.
  
• Simon Lavington reported: "the decision to hang valves downwards was, said FC jokingly, Tom's most important contribution to the design of Baby. Having the connections to the valve base 'on top' made the soldering of modifications much easier - and of course re-soldering was a fact of life early on in the commissioning process." (email to Jim Miles, 16th July 2024).
  
• (From George Baker by email to Jim Miles, 22/07/2024) The 5 way switch "option buttons" were from the 4 channel selector (+OFF) for a WW2 fighter VHF radio, and the "latch" mechanism was removed from the "option buttons" of the typewriter.
  
• (From IMG0007) F.C. Williams and Tom Kilburn at Console
  This image was obtained from compact disk CD 17 in the departmental archive, which contains a collection of digital images, original sources unknown. These are also in the departmental digital archive at ~/Digital Artefacts/Images/Assorted_Disks/CD17. Some notes for IMG0001 to IMG0024 are obtained from IMG0025
  
• (From the notes of print P4133J3-HJK15-6A): Photograph TK and FCW by the "Baby". TK (left) and FCW (Right) at the control panel of the Manchester University Mark I Computer. 9 photographs (The famous wedding photos). Date: c 1948. (Hilary Kahn documentation catalogue (c2006)).
  The date in the title is correct for this image. In Dai Edwards' Digital Computer Pioneer lecture on September 9th 1981 (30' 50") Dai said that this photo was taken in 1949, but that the appearance of the console hadn't changed since 1948.
  
• There is a photographic print in Kilburn Room 2.53, filing cabinet A drawer A2, blue folder HJK15, condition: Fine.

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This is the best of set SET0008, which contains images IMG0007, P2150G, P2154G, P4133J3-HJK15-6A, page1d, page5d and page7c. ID: page7c. 10390x6993 (+PDF).Forum entry: page7c Copyright: unknown. Collection: The Departmental 35mm negative collection, which includes copies of most images in the earlier collections. Source artefact: P3026H-page7c, photographic negative, condition: good.

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