Programming in the early days of the computer age

[knocker]

Everyone remembers the first computer they ever used. And Joyce Wheeler is no exception. But in her case the situation was a bit different. The first computer she used was one of the first computers anyone used.

The machine was Edsac - the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator - that ran for the first time in 1949 and was built to serve scientists at the University of Cambridge.

Joyce Wheeler was one of those scientists who, at the time, was working on her PhD under the supervision of renowned astronomer Fred Hoyle.

"My work was about the reactions inside stars," she said. "I was particularly interested in how long main sequence stars stay on their main sequence.

"I wanted to know how long a star took to fade out," she explained.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38103893

It reminds me of the early numerical days in the METO. You can get some idea of this by reading the obituary (and links) of Fred Bushby. I was his gopher briefly in 1959.

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/associates/users/bushby.htm