- Tom Kilburn
Infobox Engineer
image_width = 150px
caption = PAGENAME
name = PAGENAME
nationality = English
birth_date =August 11 ,1921
birth_place =Dewsbury ,Yorkshire
death_date =January 17 ,2001
death_place =Manchester
education =
spouse =
parents =
children =
discipline =
institutions = University of Manchester
practice_name =
significant_projects =Manchester Mark I
significant_design =
significant_advance =
significant_awards =Tom Kilburn (
August 11 ,1921 -January 17 ,2001 ) was an Englishengineer . With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams Tube and the first stored-programcomputer in the world, theManchester Mark I , while working at the University of Manchester.Computer engineering
Kilburn was born in
Dewsbury ,Yorkshire and graduated inmathematics fromSidney Sussex College, Cambridge , pursuing a course compressed to two years following the outbreak ofWorld War II . On graduation, he was recruited byC.P. Snow for unspecified secret work and found himself on a crash course inelectronics before being posted to theTelecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern to work onRadar under F.C. Williams. In 1943 he married Irene Marsden and the couple went on to raise a son and a daughter.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 storage for data and instructions. Kilburn and Williams collaboratively developed a storage device based on acathode ray tube and capable of storing a singlebit . Apatent was filed in 1946.In December 1946, Williams took up the chair of electrotechnics at Manchester and recruited Kilburn on secondment from Malvern. The two developed their storage technology and, in 1948, Kilburn put it to a practical test in constructing the
Small-Scale Experimental Machine which became the firststored-program computer to run a program, onJune 21 ,1948 .Kilburn received the degree of
Ph.D. for his work at Manchester and had then anticipated a return to Malvern. However, Williams persuaded him to stay to work on the University's collaborative project developing theFerranti Mark I , the world's first commercial computer. Over the next three decades, Kilburn led the development of a succession of innovative Manchester computers including Atlas andMU5 .Administration
During his career at the University of Manchester, Kilburn was instrumental in forming the Department of Computer Science in 1964, becoming the first head of the department, and served as Dean of the Faculty of Science (1970-1972) and pro-vice-chancellor of the university (1976-1979). He retired in 1981.
Personal
Kilburn habitually holidayed with his family in
Blackpool but was always back in time forManchester United F.C. 's first match of the football season.He died in
Manchester ofpneumonia following abdominalsurgery .Honours
*Fellow of the
Royal Society , (1965)
*CBE, (1973)
*Royal Medal of the Royal Society, (1978)
* The Computer Science building at Manchester University is named "The Kilburn Building".External links
* [http://www.computer50.org/mark1/kilburn.html Tom Kilburn Biography (1921-2001)]
* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20010123/ai_n9660505 Tom Kilburn Obituary:Independent]
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