Posted on behalf of Tom Lean, interviewer for 'Made in Britain':
It would be an understatement to say that a 15 hour interview with a scientist generates a great deal of very interesting insights: glimpses into how scientists think, recounting of breakthrough moments, interactions with colleagues, descriptions of laboratories, explanation of techniques, reflections on laboratory culture, wider influences on work, and more. Yet every now and again you come across one of those moments that really makes you pause and reflect on how perspectives change over the years.
The 1950s computer company manager declaring "the world only needs five computers", is an oft repeated cliché when people talk of the history of computing. However, it is not without some truth, and, furthermore, there are good reasons why early computer developers thought this would be the case. To many of those building the first computers, their sheer size, complexity and expense, along with the purely mathematical and scientific uses then envisaged, made it fanciful that they would eventually become everyday technologies. The basic components of a computer's logic circuits in the 1940s and 50s were valves, each about the size of a lightbulb. But the miniaturisation of computer components over the last 50 years has been dramatic and a typical microchip today has the equivalent of millions of valves in an area of perhaps a square centimetre.
Geoff Tootill was part of the small team of ex-radar engineers, including Tom Kilburn and F.C. Williams, who built the world's first wholly electronic stored program computer, the Small Scale Experimental Machine, or 'Baby', at the University of Manchester. Containing over 500 valves, 17 feet in length and weighing around a ton, the Manchester Baby was an experimental birds' nest of wires and components built on 7 foot tall post office racks – not the sort of machine you could ever envisage on your desk. Designed to test the principle of using a Cathode Ray Tube (as found in a television or radar display) as a computer memory, Baby ran its first test program in June 1948. In this clip, Geoff Tootill describes his thoughts in those early days about the future of computers and the uses they would be put to.