1945
Automatic Computing Engine Project
Takes responsibility for developing the concept that becomes the Automatic Computing Engine project.
Historical place archive
Browse historical events and people recorded at National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain. The records below are rendered directly from the World History Database into this page's initial HTML.
Takes responsibility for developing the concept that becomes the Automatic Computing Engine project.
Applies his universal-machine ideas to the practical design of an electronic stored-program computer.
Joins the National Physical Laboratory to work on the design of a new electronic computer.
NPL accepts Turings technical architecture for the Automatic Computing Engine.
Designs ACE around mercury acoustic delay-line storage, then considered a practical high-speed electronic memory technology.
Prioritises very high processing speed and efficient instruction execution in the ACE design.
Develops an instruction system intended to make efficient use of ACE memory and electronic arithmetic units.
Specifies a computer in which instructions and numerical data are held in electronic memory for automatic execution.
Leaves the National Physical Laboratory after delays in constructing the full ACE design.
Writes the NPL report Intelligent Machinery, one of the earliest substantial discussions of machine intelligence.
Explores the idea that intelligent behaviour can emerge by training a machine through experience and modification.
Introduces unorganised machines as networks whose behaviour can be trained rather than completely fixed in advance.
Provenance
These entries are generated from stored World History Database records whose country and place fields match Great Britain and National Physical Laboratory. Names, dates, event labels and descriptions are reviewed and normalised as the database develops. Historical place names may not match modern administrative boundaries.
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