General Trick Blogger

There were no computer engineers or computer scientists—that was decades in the future. “Computer people” in the first generation were often physicists or mathematicians as well as engineers. All were new to this exciting new field of electronic digital computing. Huskey, a mathematician, was a key participant in this early period, working with several of the most important machines and people in the history of computing.

Huskey received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics at the University of Idaho (1937) and a masters and doctorate (1943) in mathematics from Ohio State University. For his doctorate, Huskey worked under professor Tibor Rado, who, in WW I, had escaped a Siberian military prison, hijacked a train from Siberia to Vladivostok, and somehow made it back to his native Hungary.

Huskey’s first job was teaching mathematics as an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, mainly to U.S. Navy students during WW II. While there, he applied for classified work at Penn’s Moore School of Engineering. Without knowing the specific details of the work, Huskey soon learned that he would be a team member on the legendary ENIAC project—the first large-scale electronic computer (1946). Huskey recalls:

I heard that there were projects at the electrical engineering department of the Moore School at the university, and I applied for part time work. Since their work was classified they couldn’t tell me what they were doing, so I had no idea what I would be doing. When finally clearance came, I was shown the ENIAC and I’ve worked in computers ever since.

[p. 10 Harry Huskey CHM Oral History]

Huskey in front of the ENIAC main control panel.

On the project, Huskey’s task was to interface the punched card reader and punch to ENIAC and to write the impressive technical manuals that described ENIAC’s operation.

Once ENIAC was officially announced to the world as a working system on Feb 15, 1946, Huskey left the project and took up a summer teaching position at Ohio State University. While there, he received a telegram from Douglas Hartree, a famous British mathematician and physicist, whom he had met during the ENIAC project:

… about July we got the cable from England. Before that, Hartree had been running problems on the ENIAC and I’d talked to him and asked him about opportunities in England. He didn’t say much, so the cable offering the job was a surprise. But we accepted it. We didn’t know what NPL was, but we accepted it.

[p. 15 Harry Huskey CHM Oral History]

When he arrived at NPL—the National Physical Laboratory—Huskey, after adjusting to “smoked fish for breakfast,” began working on a prototype computer whose direction was ultimately under Alan Turing. This was the Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), one of the earliest electronic computers built in the U.K. The Pilot ACE was a smaller version of the full ACE, designed by Turing and built some years later. Both machines were intended to embody Turing’s grand idea that computers could be universal, that is, that they could perform any logical operation through software rather than purpose-built hardware. The big idea behind all this was the notion of a stored-program . A stored-program machine keeps its operating instructions and data in memory, where they can change dynamically. Rather than building a separate machine for each purpose, Turing’s machine, using the idea of a stored-program, could become any machine. Being able to store its own program is one of the defining characteristics of what we think of as a computer today.

The original Pilot ACE, on display at the Science Museum, London.

Huskey spent several months working, as did most of the 3-man team, on algorithms and instruction sets.

Of course, Turing was interested in what we came to call the “Big ACE”, which was a much more complicated machine than the…[Pilot ACE]. What we wanted was one that would prove all the different techniques to outsiders, for example. What we all wanted to do personally was build a computing machine that would work. As far as the machine is concerned, you took a look at Turing’s design and say, “What can we cut out and still have something that does a reasonable computational job?” So we did that.

[p. 19 Harry Huskey CHM Oral History]

This machine became the Pilot ACE and ran its first program on May 10, 1950, by which time Huskey had left NPL to return to the United States. It quickly became popular with mathematicians and was kept very busy until its retirement in May 1955. A commercial version, called the Deuce, was built and sold by English Electric, probably the first commercially produced computer in Britain.

Turing was an interesting character. He had no patience for stupidity. None whatsoever. And he wouldn’t talk to newspaper people or news magazines and so on. But if somebody had a little problem and they were having a terrible time, he would help them and go way out of his way to help them. So he was that kind of a mixture. I think there’s no hint, as far as I was concerned, about his homosexuality. None whatsoever. He was an Olympic class runner, of course, at that time. In fact, I raced him to Dollis Hill [a distance of 16 miles].

Wilkinson had raced him with a bicycle, you see. But when it came to me, I clearly was not the bicycle type. So the challenge was: I would take the train, and we’d leave at the same time and see who got there first. Because going by train wasn’t too simple. You would take– the train from Teddington did a loop back into Waterloo Station. So you go part of the way into town and at Clapham junction, I think it is, there you pick up a train that goes circular around London to the north edge. There you pick another train that goes out to Dollis Hill. Well, I think I beat Turing by five minutes or something of that sort. …In a little briefcase, I carried his clothing and he changed at the gate at Dollis Hill and we went to visit the people there.

[p. 20, Harry Huskey CHM Oral History]

Alan Turing, winning second place, at the NPL Sports Day, December 1946.

In December of 1948, the peripatetic Huskey had left NPL to design and lead fabrication of the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC), a US government-sponsored computer that would support mathematicians at UCLA and the air force at a new center for numerical analysis. The machine was meant to be an interim computer while manufacturers caught up to the independent efforts of universities and government. It ran, with some modifications, until 1967. Huskey, who says later that he learned his electronic design skills from a textbook as he went along on the Pilot ACE project, remarkably led the SWAC design as well. There were some thorny problems to solve. For example, here Huskey describes the primitive state of manufacturing the cathode ray tube memories that SWAC used:

Well, the real challenge was the presence of flaws on the face of the tubes.  We bought tubes from Dumont. And we come to find out that they were made in a warehouse that had been a mattress factory, and the lint would deposit. There was lint everywhere, and it would deposit in the face of the tube when they put the phosphor there. And then when the tube was heated and evacuated, the heating would turn those pieces of lint to carbon, and you have these little areas that you can’t store on a spot next to because it just spreads out on the piece of burnt lint.

[p. 29 Harry Huskey CHM Oral History]

Harry Huskey examining one of SWAC’s Williams Tube memory units, tubes often rendered useless by lint.

At that time of its completion in July 0f 1950, SWAC was, for a brief period, the fastest computer in the world. It is also one of the earliest computers in the United States and lived on, in modified form, at UCLA until 1967.

Drawing describing SWAC logical flow, Harry Huskey papers, Computer History Museum.

During his SWAC work, Huskey also appeared on You Bet Your Life, a live television show hosted by Groucho Marx, in which the mild-mannered Huskey tries to explain what SWAC does. Groucho, as usual, takes no prisoners and ties everything (and everyone) into knots. You can listen to the episode, which first aired May 10, 1950, here. The Huskey sequence starts at 15:08.

After five years on the SWAC project, Huskey accepted a teaching offer at UC Berkeley, beginning in 1954. While there, he designed, under contract, a remarkable computer that embodied the then-heretical notion that one person could use a computer all to themselves, without the need for operators to intercede.

While at Berkeley, he designed the G15, which was manufactured and sold by Bendix Aviation Corporation. The G15 was the first computer that could perhaps be called a “personal,” computer, in that one person alone could operate it. Introduced in 1956, it was targeted at scientific, industrial and engineering users who could simply sit at the machine themselves and solve problems right away. It’s difficult to appreciate how big a difference this approach had on the ‘thinking style’ of G15 users in which multiple variables can be changed quickly and easily on a computer, allowing for iterative problem-solving of a type that is not possible with existing computers (which were, by and large, enormous room-filling complex systems professionally managed and mediated).

Bendix G-15 promotional brochure.

The G15 didn’t fill a room—it was the size of a refrigerator. It costs just under $50,000 or could be rented for about $1,500 a month. These are big amounts for the 1950s but a fraction of the other systems, which could cost millions of dollars. CHM has a G-15 in its permanent collection.

In 1967, Huskey left Berkeley for the newly-opened University of California at Santa Cruz campus, which he joined as faculty and founder and director of its computer center, a position he held for 10 years. He taught and advised other universities on setting up their own computing centers and computer science programs, including a 2-year stay in India at IIT-Kanpur advising on their new computing activities there on a Ford Foundation and USAID program. He also advised the University of Yangon (Rangoon), Burma with UNESCO support. He retired in 1986 and lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Harry Huskey will be joining the CHM Fellow Awards this year to accept his award in person.

Global Entrepreneurship in 2015 Photograph: Guim

It’s official – the UK is the most entrepreneurial country in Europe, according to a new report that measures startup progress in the world.

Britain ranks above Germany and France, and comes fourth globally in the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI), which profiles entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The index measures the entrepreneurial ecosystems of 130 countries, from Albania to Zambia, looking at entrepreneurial attitudes, aspirations and activity.

The four top-performing entrepreneurial countries are English-speaking, and are followed by Scandinavian countries. Taiwan is in eighth place and Singapore makes it into the top 10 for the first time.

The world is at 52% of its entrepreneurial capacity, according to the report, compiled by researchers from the London School of Economics, George Mason University, University of Pécs and Imperial College London Business School.

Competition, the opportunity to start a business, and human capital are the key areas of entrepreneurial strength in the UK. Nearly 500,000 new businesses have been created in 2014 according to StartUp Britain, the online company tracker site. Yet, the nation’s innovators still have some catching up to do in terms of their ambition and aspiration for startups, according to the GEI.

Here are some of the top innovations that Britain has given the world through the ages.

James Dyson, the inventor of the bagless cyclone vacuum cleaner, developed 5,127 prototype designs between 1979 and 1984. He opened his research centre and factory in Wiltshire in 1993, and his DC01 model became the biggest selling vacuum cleaner in the UK within 18 months.

After the second world war, Harry Walker began hand-slicing and frying potatoes and founded his snack company in 1948 in Leicester, England. Now, squeaky-clean Leicester-born former footballer Gary Lineker is the face of the company.

Josiah Wedgwood’s factory of highly durable pottery was set up in 1759. Wedgwood’s cream-coloured earthenware was fit for Georgian royalty and was christened “Queen’s ware” after Queen Charlotte appointed him as her potter in 1762, and the distinctive white and blue ceramic jasperware has become synomymous with the brand. It has continued as a luxury brand and employs 3,800 people around the world.

Halifax-born Percy Shaw patented in 1934 the light-reflecting road markers which look like cat’s eyes in the dark, helping drivers all over the world ever since.

Scottish inventor John Adrian Shepherd-Barron, who was born in British India, came up with the genius concept of a self-service machine that would dispense money with 24/7 availability. The first machine was established in June 1967 outside an Enfield, north London, branch of Barclays bank. Plastic cards had not been invented so the cash machine was fed with cheques and paid out one £10 note at a time. And we’ve never looked back since.

In 2008 Julie Dean was looking for a timeless schoolbag for her children and so hand-made a leather satchel. Dean started the company with her mum at her side at the kitchen table with a £600 budget, sold the satchels online on eBay, won multiple awards, and has now opened a store in Covent Garden in London.

Television

Scottish innovator John Logie Baird invented the world’s first mechanical television. The heart of the system ran on a large spinning disk and in 1925, the public in Selfridges department store in Oxford Street, London, was treated to the sight of ‘shadowgraphs’ – silhouette outline images. By October he was able to produce recognisable images with shades of grey. Later, he developed a system of colour television and this formed the basis of the technique used by Nasa to bring live colour TV pictures from the moon.

The thermos flask, one of the most quintessentially British items embraced by commuters and picnickers across the nation, was first invented by Scottish scientist James Dewar. He invented the vacuum flask in 1892, which acted as a storage vessel insulating content – either keeping it hot or cold – and actually consists of two flasks.

The chocolate bar

In 1756 Joseph Fry began to sell chocolate and in 1847 Fry’s company mixed together cocoa powder, extracted cocoa butter and sugar, put it into a mould and is credited with making the first solid chocolate, suitable for widespread consumption. JS Fry & Sons began producing the Fry’s Chocolate Cream bar in 1866 and over 220 products were introduced in the following decades, including production of its first chocolate Easter egg in UK in 1873.

The father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, did not patent his idea and made it freely available without royalties. So although he hasn’t made billions from his idea, his invention changed the world and his altruism allowed many other online startups to prosper.

Related content

In this month’s issue of Top Gear magazine, we embark on the biggest road trip in our history: driving through all 50 US states* in the new Ford Mustang.

Back in 1964, the first-generation Mustang kicked off one of the longest-standing automotive dynasties. Since then, there have been highs and lows, but the latest incarnation is not only the most technologically advanced model but, we believe, the best-looking since the original. And it’s going global…

That’s right, from 2015, you’ll be able to walk into your local Ford dealer and buy a right-hand-drive slice of Americana. So to celebrate 50 years of the Mustang, we needed a journey of epic proportions, and what we ended up with was the most ambitious (and definitely not rubbish) road trip in TG mag’s history.

Read about this incredible adventure in the December issue of TG mag, on sale now at all newsagents and supermarkets. Or download our interactive digital edition on your smartphone or tablet.

Our Mustang vs the States feature takes us from Maine on the East Coast, through all 50 states*, ending in Venice Beach in California. In 16 days, we cover 11,175 miles, burn 428 gallons of fuel, eat 28ft of sandwich and squash 1,804,316 bugs (approximately). We also manage to get through a set of brakes, two rear tyres and a fog light. And quite surprisingly, given the Mustang’s 5.0-litre 435bhp V8, we pick up 0 speeding tickets. Honestly.

(*OK, 49 states – we missed the boat to Hawaii…)

Also in this issue: an in-depth look at the futuristic Volkswagen XL1 Sport concept, a ‘drive’ in Merc’s self-driving lorry, Vauxhall’s Corsa takes on the Fiesta and Polo in our triple road test, and a real rally driver tests out our homebuilt Hyundai i20 racer. In the News, we look back at the career of ex-Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo and check out the deranged Ferrari F60 America, Nissan’s Pulsar Nismo hot hatch and Infiniti’s Q80 concept.

We meet Max Verstappen and the young drivers set to dominate the racing world, Richard Hammond drives the original gullwing – the Mercedes 300SL – and Ralf Little takes our Driving Test.

Plus, we review all the latest new cars that matter, including the Ford Mondeo, Volkswagen Passat, Mercedes-Benz C-Class Estate, BMW X6, Seat Leon X-Perience, Porsche Cayenne, Fiat Panda Cross and Skoda Fabia.

Get all of this, plus the usual thoughts/ramblings from Clarkson, Hammond and May.

The December issue of Top Gear magazine is available now.

Never miss an issue with one of these great offers:

Struggling for gift ideas? Get yourself or a fellow petrolhead a subscription to Top Gear magazine for just £29.99 AND get a limited-edition Stig T-shirt too – CLICK HERE

NEW – If you own a Samsung tablet, you can get the fully interactive edition with video, image galleries and fully enhanced poweeerrrr direct to your device. Simply download directly from the Samsung PaperGarden.

You can also get the fully interactive edition on iPad and iPhone – CLICK HERE

Print edition now available on all Android devices – CLICK HERE