The work of Professor Andrew D. Booth
Dr. Andrew Donald Booth first become involved in automatic calculators
during the Second World War, whilst working on the determination
of crystal structures using X-ray diffraction data. The computations
involved were extremely tedious and there was ample incentive
for automating the process. Booth was employed as a mathematical
physicist in the X-ray team at the British Rubber Producers' Research
Association (BRPRA), Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, from August
1943 to September 1945. After this he moved to Birkbeck College,
University of London, though still being retained for a while
as a consultant by BRPRA. This link with BRPRA later proved fortuitous
in respect of workshop facilities for his Automatic Relay Computer
(ARC), which he designed during 1947-49.
Sometime in 1945 Booth met Professor D.R. Hartree and began to
think about the possibilities of general-purpose automatic digital
computers. A visit to John von Neumann's group at the Institute
for Advanced Study at Princeton (from March to September 1947),
set Booth firmly on the design of a stored-program computer.
(Preface to Booth's report of that visit). As
contemporary projects went, Booth's group was probably the smallest
in terms of resources and personnel. He had one programming assistant,
Miss Kathleen Britten (later Mrs. K.H.V. Booth). He had stated
that at no time did he have more than one engineer working for
him. Despite these limitations, Booth produced an
electronic stored-program computer in full operation at the Birkbeck College
Computation Laboratory, University of London, by the end of 1952.
Provenance: Manchester University, Department of Computer Science,
courtesy Professor D.B.G. Edwards. Material collected by Professor
Simon Lavington.
References:
S.H. Lavington, Early British Computers (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1980).
"A.D. Booth", Pioneers of Computing No.9 (Science
Museum Oral History Tapes, 1976). Copy in NAHC.
Reproduced with the permission of:
Centre for the History of Science,Technology and Medicine,
University of Manchester.
