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By  Jessie Staples 14 November 2024 3 min read

Key points

  • We’re celebrating the 75th anniversary of our first computer.
  • The CSIR Mk1, later known as CSIRAC, was the first computer in Australia to run a test program on 14 November 1949.
  • CSIRAC continued to provide computing services until 1964 and is now on display at Scienceworks in Victoria.

Earlier this year we launched our powerful high-performance computer Virga, but CSIRO's history with powerful computers goes way back. 

In 1947, an ambitious project underway at our Sydney-based Radiophysics Laboratory marked the start of a computer revolution. 

A team of brilliant engineers and scientists had set out to build a machine capable of performing complex equations at unprecedented speeds. They were using the latest valve technology and pulse techniques from World War II to pull it off. 

CSIR Mk1 is born

Under the leadership of Dr. Trevor Pearcey, Maston Beard and Geoff Hill, construction began on this pioneering machine in the late 1940s. On 14 November 1949, the CSIR Mk1 computer ran its initial test program. It was the first in Australia to do so.

CSIR Mk1 would later come to be known as CSIRAC (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer). It was the fourth stored-program computer in the world. This type of computer used memory to store its program instructions, allowing it to perform a variety of tasks automatically. Computers before this could not store information and had to be manually hardwired each time. They couldn’t be easily altered to complete different tasks.

One of CSIRAC’s creators Trevor Pearcey, surveying the CSIRAC machine (1952).

The rise of the machine 

Though CSIRAC’s processing performance was a fraction of what our phones can do today, it was a huge leap forward in the 1950s.  

CSIRAC was a massive machine, filling a room the size of a double garage and consuming enough electricity to power a small suburb. This was due to the many parts required to make it work, which are now obsolete.  

For example, there were pipes containing mercury, called mercury delay lines. Used for storing data, sound waves would travel along the pipes to a detection point. Then the sound was amplified and sent back through the mercury. 

There were also around 2000 vacuum tubes. These were hollow glass tubes of various sizes which had all the air taken out of them and sealed, creating a vacuum. These tubes were used to control the electrical currents that passed through them.   

With these features, CSIRAC had a processing speed of 1000 instructions per second (we now measure in millions per second). Its memory could store up to 2 kilobytes, quite different to the gigabytes contained in our phones these days. 

CSIRAC was used by our scientists from 1951 to 1955 for tackling a range of tasks. These included weather forecasting and computations for radioastronomy and cloud physics. 

One of its most memorable achievements was in 1951 when it played the first ever computer-generated music, “Colonel Bogey,” at Australia’s first computer conference. This achievement highlighted the potential computers had to create art. 

Later, the computer was used to complete calculations for industry, such as mortgage calculations. It even played some of the first computer games. 

The final frontier and future endeavour

Improvements were steadily made to the computer. In 1956, CSIRAC was dismantled, loaded on trucks, and driven down the Hume Highway to the University of Melbourne. It continued to provide a computing service at the University of Melbourne until 1964, processing more than 1000 projects over its lifetime.

CSIRAC is now on display at Scienceworks in Victoria. Though no longer operational, it is the world’s oldest stored-program electronic computer still in existence.

Professor Elanor Huntington, our Digital, National Facilities and Collections Executive Director, said it’s important to reflect on our computing history.

“Research infrastructure is a bit of a time machine.  The technology that CSIRO built 75 years ago was super prescient – it’s gone on to transform and disrupt our world in a completely profound way.”

“The legacy of CSIRAC inspires us to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation,” Elanor said.

Our work in computers and network technology continues. There was the start of Csironet, our first computing service and network, that is celebrating its 60th anniversary, and now our high-performance computer Virga, which uses energy-efficient direct liquid cooling.

“What was important 75 years ago – and still matters today – is the power of collaboration, curiosity, and perseverance and its ability to inspire the next generation of innovators."

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