petersaville.net

The University of Sydney is planning to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the building of the first high-speed computer in an Australian university. It was known as Silliac and it was the biggest computer of its time The computer was constructed in the School of Physics building with assistance from Standard Telephones and Cables Pty Ltd (now Alcatel Australia), with the first successful scientific calculation on the machine performed on July 4, 1956. It was officially opened on September 12, 1956. But the lack of parts finally saw the computer dismantled in 1969.

SILLIAC was "an almost exact copy of the automatic computer at the University of Illinois, the ILLIAC, and as it is the Sydney version of the ILLIAC, it has been called the SILLIAC", according to the SILLIAC Programming Manual. ILLIAC (completed in 1952) was an early member of the IAS Princeton family of computers.

# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 1:16 AM