By Goya Dmytryshchak
Australia’s oldest computer and the world’s fourth-oldest is back on display at Scienceworks.
The 2500-kilogram computer known as CSIRAC (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Automatic Computer) takes up half a shipping container.
Designed and constructed by a team led by Trevor Pearcey of Monash University, CSIRAC was built at the Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney and ran its first program in 1949. It was shut down in 1964.
Now, it is back for the Think Ahead exhibition. Scienceworks’ Jonathan Shearer said CSIRAC was one of the most significant objects in Museums Victoria’s collection.
“This room-filling machine is the technological ancestor of your phone or laptop, but was nowhere near as powerful and
definitely couldn’t fit in your pocket,” Mr Shearer said.
It was so energy-hungry that occasionally someone plugging in an electric jug nearby would overload the power system and wipe the day’s work.
Demand for CSIRAC had been so great that people often had to wait weeks to gain access.
Former head of Melbourne University’s computer science department, Dr Peter Thorne worked with CSIRAC as weekend computer technician in the early 1960s.
“CSIRAC is now recognised internationally as the only survivor of the handful of machines that launched the modern digital age and as the first computer to play music,” Dr Thorne said.
