Talk:Ferranti Mark 1

Computing Start‑class High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Early computers task force (assessed as High-importance).

It is requested that a photograph be included in this article to improve its quality.
The external tool WordPress Openverse may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

Upload

(untitled)

As an undergraduate, I spent one summer as a maintenance technician on the FERUT computer and learned programming from Christopher Strachey. My memory of the machine was that its Williams Tube memories had 64 64-bit words, arranged in blocks of 8 x 8 bits, with a parity bit row to the right and above the actual memory bits, making a 65 x 65 bit pattern. Strachey programmed the index register on the console (a similar Williams tube) to visually represent a checkers board, and programmed the machine to play against a human opponent who entered moves on the teletype. (I'm not putting this in the main page, because it relies on my memory rather than on documented evidence)Mmt (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

instruction represented by a single character?

There are some statements in the article, which, IMHO, are contradicting:

The Mark 1 used a 20-bit word
Instructions were stored in a single word (__how many?__)
There were about fifty instructions in total
the characters representing the values from 0–31 (five-bit numbers)
Each instruction was represented by a single character

Now, if there were about 50 instructions in total, then how could they be represented by a single character? (ie. one of 32 possible values)?

It makes no sense.

Even if in a single word (20 bits) there would be two instructions stored, it would make 10 bits per instruction used, ie, __two__ 5-bit blocks or characters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klenot (talk • contribs) 06:22, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]