Oral history interview with A. W. M. Coombs, ca. 1976.

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Oral history interview with A. W. M. Coombs, ca. 1976.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/63283021

Coombs focuses primarily on the Colossus, ACE, and MOSAIC computers. He begins with his work as an engineer in the Post Office Research Establishment (PORE) in the late 1930s, where he joined Thomas H. Flowers in vacuum tube switching experiments. He compares their results with achievements they made during the war on the Colossus calculator. Based on his experience with the Colossus, Coombs was asked to join the National Physical Laboratory's ACE computer project. Coombs recalls Alan Turing's lectures on computing which he and William Chandler, a colleague from PORE, heard when they were beginning the project in 1947. He also describes the MOSAIC computer he and Chandler built for the Ministry of Supply in 1954.

Sound cassette : 1 (60 min.) : analog, mono.

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

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SNAC Resource ID: 7885068

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

Related Entities

There are 8 Entities related to this resource.

Post Office Research Establishment (Great Britain)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6q03ggj (corporateBody)

Turing, Alan Mathison, 1912-1954

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w65x59c7 (person)

Turing read mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of King's in 1935. He began research in mathematical logic which led to his well-known work on computable numbers and the 'Turing Machine.' He spent two years at Princeton University, 1936-1938, working with A. Church, and the war years at Bletchley Park, at the Code and Cypher School, 1939-1945, and was awarded the OBE for his work on 'Enigma' and other codes. At the end of the war he declined a Cambridge University Lec...

Great Britain. Ministry of Supply

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6k1177v (corporateBody)

National Physical Laboratory (Great Britain)

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6nc9wn6 (corporateBody)

Chandler, William Henry, 1878-1970

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6kw880d (person)

Flowers, T. H. (Thomas Harold), 1905-1998

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62827v2 (person)

British computer scientist. From the description of Oral history interview with Thomas Harold Flowers, ca. 1976. (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). WorldCat record id: 63288502 ...

Coombs, A. W. M.,

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6g471b3 (person)

British computer scientist. From the description of Oral history interview with A. W. M. Coombs, ca. 1976. (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). WorldCat record id: 63283021 ...

Evans, Christopher Riche

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6gm8sx1 (person)

British computer scientist. From the description of Pioneers of computing, 1975-1976. (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). WorldCat record id: 63283010 ...