Tom Kilburn

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Tom Kilburn
CBE FRS
Tom Kilburn
Born(1921-08-11)11 August 1921
Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England
Died17 January 2001(2001-01-17) (aged 79)
Manchester, England
NationalityEnglish
EducationWheelwright Grammar School for Boys
Alma mater
Known for
Spouse
Irene Marsden
​
(m. 1943)​
[1]
Children2[1]
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
Frederic Calland Williams

Tom Kilburn

Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science.[3][4][5]

A graduate of

paging.[6]

Early life and education

Tom Kilburn was born in Earlseaton near Dewsbury, Yorkshire, on 11 August 1921,[7] the only son of John William Kilburn, a wool mill clerk who later became a company secretary, and his wife, Ivy Mortimer. From 1932 to 1940,[8] he attended the Wheelwright Grammar School for Boys, where the headmaster encouraged his aptitude for mathematics.[9] He also played sports, notably running.[8]

In 1940, Kilburn entered

First Class Honours in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos and preliminary examinations for Part II.[9]

Career and research

On graduation, Kilburn was recruited by

Frederic Calland Williams. The group was responsible for designing and debugging electronic circuitry. Although Williams was initially disappointed at being given someone with so little practical experience, Kilburn became a valued member of the team.[9] On 14 August 1943, he married Irene Marsden, a shop assistant. They went on to raise a son, John, and a daughter, Anne.[8]

Kilburn's wartime work inspired his enthusiasm for some form of electronic computer. The principal technical barrier to such a development at that time was the lack of any practical means of

Williams–Kilburn tube. A patent was filed in 1946.[11] Initially they used it to store a single bit. The CRT image soon faded, so they devised a scheme by which it was read and refreshed continually, effectively making the data storage permanent. By December 1947, they were able to store 2,048 bits on one 6-inch (150 mm) diameter CRT.[12][13]

In December 1946, Williams took up the Edward Stocks Massey Chair of

Electrotechnics at the University of Manchester, and recruited Kilburn on secondment from Malvern.[9] The two developed their storage technology and, in 1948, Kilburn put it to a practical test in constructing the Manchester Baby, which became the first stored-program computer to run a program, on 21 June 1948.[8] He received the degree of PhD in 1948 for his work at Manchester, writing his thesis on A storage system for use with binary digital computing machines under Williams's supervision.[14]

Manchester computers

Kilburn anticipated a return to Malvern but Williams persuaded him to stay to work on the university's collaborative project developing the

magnetic drum storage.[8][19] Nine Mark I computers were sold by between 1951 and 1957.[9]

Museum of Science and Industry
in Manchester

Over the next three decades, Kilburn led the development of a succession of innovative

floating point arithmetic.[8] Meg operated for the first time in 1954, and nineteen were sold by Ferranti under the name 'Mercury', six of them to customers overseas.[9]

While Kilburn led one design team working on Meg, he led another with Dick Grimsdale and Douglas Webb, on a research project examining what he believed would be the next step forward in computer design: the use of transistors. The 48-bit machine they completed in November 1953 was the world's first transistor computer, with 550 diodes and 92 transistors, and was manufactured by STC. An improved version completed in April 1955 had 1,300 diodes and 200 transistors, and was sold by Metropolitan-Vickers as the Metrovick 950.[9]

Kilburn's next project, known as

Rutherford Laboratory.[9]

The Kilburn Building, home of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester is named in honour of Tom Kilburn.

Kilburn became a professor of computing engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Manchester in 1960. He was instrumental in forming the

MU5, which was designed to facilitate the running of programs in high-level programming languages. An analysis of code written for the Atlas gave an insight into the frequency of different operands and control structures. The project was assisted by a £630,000 Science Research Council (SRC) grant awarded over five-years. The design heavily influenced the successful ICL 2900 Series.[9][20]

Awards and honours

Over the years, Kilburn received numerous awards and accolades. He was elected a

Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1973,[26] and was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Bath in 1979.[27]

Memorial plaque commemorating Kilburn

Kilburn received the IEEE Computer Society

Mountbatten Medal. 1997.[33] A building at the University of Manchester, which houses the Department of Computer Science, is named "The Kilburn Building" in his honour.[34][35] His nomination for the Royal Society reads:

Professor of Computer Engineering in the University of Manchester. He was a pioneer in the engineering realisation of the general purpose electronic digital computer and has made major contributions to the rapid rate of development that has occurred in this field over the past 15 years. His contributions cover the whole range from overall system design to the invention of high speed circuits to meet particular needs. His latest machine, 'Atlas' may well be the most advanced machine currently under construction anywhere in the World.[30]

Personal life

Kilburn married Irene Marsden in 1943 and had two children, one daughter and one son.

1968 European Cup Final at Wembley stadium was the best day of his life.[8] He took early retirement in 1981 to care for his ailing wife,[12] who was suffering from chronic bronchitis, but she died on 3 August 1981, two weeks before his retirement.[8][9][1]

After his wife's death, Kilburn lived alone in the modest house they had shared in Manchester. He did not own a personal computer.

Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.[12] He died at Trafford General Hospital in Davyhulme of pneumonia following abdominal surgery on 17 January 2001.[8]

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U23039. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ Tom Kilburn publications indexed by Google Scholar Edit this at Wikidata
  3. S2CID 31699280
    .
  4. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2009.32
    .
  5. S2CID 6971607
    .
  6. OCLC 156380308
    .
  7. S2CID 71234844
    .
  8. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55314. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  9. ^
    S2CID 42682473
    .
  10. ISSN 1058-6180
    .
  11. ISSN 0958-7403
    . Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  12. ^ a b c d e Anon (2001). "Professor Tom Kilburn". telegraph.co.uk. London: The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  13. doi:10.1049/pi-2.1949.0078
    .
  14. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.488439. A first version of this thesis was written by Kilburn with the same title, as a personal report to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) to obtain a second year of secondment to the University of Manchester. Kilburn has stated that whilst he was writing it, requests for copies came in. Twenty copies were therefore made, and the document was circulated as an Internal Report by the Department of Electrotechnics, University of Manchester, dated 1st December 1947. Due to demand, a further 30 copies were made. It is known that several copies were taken to the USA by Douglas Hartree, Harry Huskey
    and A. M. Utley (TRE) in the Spring of 1948
  15. ^
    doi:10.1109/85.707570
    .
  16. PMID 15392930
    .
  17. S2CID 4110351. Archived from the original
    on 6 April 2009.
  18. S2CID 5694189
    .
  19. S2CID 4216071
    .
  20. ^ a b Hilary J Kahn. "Obituary: Tom Kilburn". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 August 2014.
  21. doi:10.1093/comjnl/4.3.222
    .
  22. doi:10.1109/TEC.1962.5219356
    .
  23. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1978.0020
    .
  24. ^ "Roll of Distinguished Fellows". BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  25. ^ Computer History Museum. "Tom Kilburn – CHM Fellow Award Winner". Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  26. ^ "No. 45984". The London Gazette (Supplement). 22 May 1973. p. 6480. Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
  27. ^ "Honorary Graduates 1966 to 1988". University of Bath. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  28. ^ "W. Wallace McDowell Award". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  29. ^ "BCS IT Awards: 1973 – 1999". BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  30. ^ a b "Tom Kilburn EC/1965/18: Library and Archive Catalogue". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 29 April 2014.
  31. ^ "Computer Pioneer Award". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  32. ^ "Eckert Mauchly Award". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  33. ^ "Mountbatten Medal – Medal Recipients". Institute of Engineering and Technology. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  34. ^ "50 years of Computer Science at Manchester". The University of Manchester – Department of Computer Science. Retrieved 22 February 2016.
  35. ^ "The Kilburn Building". manchesterhistory.net. Retrieved 2 September 2023.

Additional source

1981: Tom Kilburn - Yorkshire's Computing Pioneer.

BBC Archive
.

Academic offices
Preceded by
-
 Head of the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester
1964–1980 		Succeeded by
Dai Edwards

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