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CSIRAC pioneer logs off14/12/2004 14:30:15
I have been told by Dr Peter Thorne in Melbourne that CSIRAC pioneer Ron Bowles died late in November. Bowles was a World War II radar technician and a member of CSIRO Radiophysics group that built CSIRAC in Sydney in 1949. He was the engineer who brought CSIRAC to Melbourne in 1955. He was told by Dr Frank Hirst to "get the doors back on" - thus indicating it was working! He was a central figure in the establishment of computing in Melbourne and in the operation and maintenance of CSIRAC until it was retired in 1964. He was the engineer who tweaked the CSIRAC clock every evening; the day shift could never work out how night jobs ran faster! Ron stayed with Melbourne University Computer Centre until his retirement. Over the last eight years Bowles has been a member of the CSIRAC history team. He has been a key player in the reconstruction of the CSIRAC music (now recognised as the first computer music in the world), the documentation of the software and hardware of CSIRAC, and in the establishment of the major exhibit at Melbourne Museum. He is survived by Nellie, his wife of almost 50 years, and mourned by all of us who appreciated his contribution to the establishment of computing in Victoria, and to the recording of our computing history." -Max Burnet CSIR Mk1, developed and built by a research team led by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard ran its first program in 1949, to become Australia's first, and the world's fifth, stored program computer. Officially commissioned in 1951 to solve problems for the CSIRO's (then CSIR) radiophysics laboratory and others, it went to Melbourne after being decommissioned in 1955. It was recomissioned as CSIRAC a year later in the University of Melbourne's computer laboratory where it performed a wide range of computing tasks until 1964. It was switched off for the last time in November 1964 by Dr Frank Hurst, and donated to the Museum of Victoria.
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