CSIRAC

City of Melbourne

이야기 8구간

역사·문화BY TELLBY

1CSIRAC

Welcome to the Melbourne Museum, and specifically, to a site of global technological importance: C-S-I-R-A-C, or the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Automatic Computer. As you look upon these massive,…
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2The Valve Racks and 30 Kilowatts of Power

Take a close look at the massive racks that make up the body of C-S-I-R-A-C. You are seeing approximately 2,000 vacuum tubes, or 'valves' as they were called in 1949. …
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3Mercury Delay Line Memory: Storing Sound

Perhaps the most fascinating part of C-S-I-R-A-C's design is its memory. Today, we take solid-state electronic memory for granted, but in 1949, storing data was a massive hurdle. …
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4Digital Music: The World's First Computer Concert

C-S-I-R-A-C holds a 'previously unheralded place of honor' in history: it was likely the first computer in the world to play digital music. In the mid-1950s, long before the famous experiments at Bell Labs in America, Australian…
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5Input and Output: The Paper Tape Era

How did one 'talk' to a computer like C-S-I-R-A-C? There were no keyboards, monitors, or mice. …
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6Preservation vs. Restoration: Why It Doesn't 'Run'

One of the most frequent questions visitors ask is: 'Will C-S-I-R-A-C ever run again?' The answer, according to curators like David Demant, is a firm 'no.' This is a classic museum dilemma: 'restoration versus preservation.' To…
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7The Legacy of Trevor Pearcey and Australia's Missed Opportunity

As we conclude our look at C-S-I-R-A-C, we must reflect on its creator, Trevor Pearcey, and the bittersweet legacy of this machine. Pearcey was a visionary who understood that computers would change the world, yet he felt that…
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8Closing

Standing here at the end of our tour, it is staggering to think that this seven-ton behemoth, with its 2,000 glowing valves and its circulating mercury sound waves, is the direct ancestor of our modern world. C-S-I-R-A-C was a…
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