What year was Australia’s first computers built and where was it built?
The history of computing hardware is the record of the constant drive to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and store more data. Before the development of the general-purpose computer, most calculations were done by humans. Tools to help humans calculate are generally called calculators. Calculators continue to develop, but computers add the critical element of conditional response, allowing automation of both numerical calculation and in general, automation of many symbol-manipulation tasks. Computer technology has undergone profound changes every decade since the 1940s. Computing hardware has become a platform for uses other than computation, such as automation, communication, control, entertainment, and education. Each field in turn has imposed its own requirements on the hardware, which has evolved in response to those requirements. Aside from written numerals, the first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices that required the operator to set up the initial values
Australia’s first computer (CSIRAC) and the world’s fourth, was built at the University of Sydney in 1949 and turned off in 1964 (before I even started) and Australia was the world’s third nation to enter the digital age. http://www.csiro.au/science/ps4f.html CSIRAC has also been referred to as “the machine that changed the world”. It “was a supercomputer for its time – revolutionising everything from weather forecasting to banking, and playing the first ever computer music.” http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/csirac/default.htm Sources: http://smartdatacollective.
