The Uses of the ACE Computor

Extract

When I accepted the invitation to give a lecture on “The Uses of the ACE Computor” my first thought was to ask for the title to be corrected. The “ACE” as such has yet to be built and the machine that has been in use in the Mathematics Division of the National Physical Laboratory is a pilot model. However, to an audience whose chief interest is in aeronautics, the ambiguity of a title including the phrase “Pilot ACE” probably outweighs the advantage of its accuracy.

As its name implies, the Pilot Ace was built,at the N.P.L., with the intention of testing out the practicability of various ideas in the design of a full scale automatic computing engine, or ACE as it was called. The over-riding consideration was economy of equipment but, despite the rudimentary nature of the facilities provided on the machine, it was found to be a fast and powerful computor and has been fully and successfully employed for the past three years on a 13 hour basis.