Abstract
Dedicated to Brian Randell, Emeritus Professor of Newcastle upon Tyne University, in commemoration of his 75th birthday, this paper evokes the origins and the development of an electronic computer realized in Antwerp (Belgium) in the early 1950’s. Our main focus is on some interesting archetypes and advanced aspects of the design, and on how a small group of Belgians engineers developed this early machine.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anderson, D.P.: An Interview with Maurice Wilkes. Communications of the ACM 52(9), 39–42 (2009)
Belevitch, V., Storrer, F.: Le calcul numérique des fonctions élémentaires dans la machine mathématique IRSIA-FNRS. Bull. Acad. Roy. Belg., Classe des Sc., t. XLII, Bruxelles, pp. 543–578 (1956)
Belevitch, V.: Le Trafic des Nombres et des Ordres dans la Machine IRSIA-FNRS. NTF 4 (1956)
Belevitch, V.: L’Art de la Logique: La Programmation. Encyclopédie des Sciences Modernes de Genève, Kister, VIII, pp. 89–90 (1958)
Biot, M.A., Manneback, C.: Florilège des Sciences en Belgique, Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Sciences, pp. 371–377 (1980)
Courtois, P.-J.: Notice Biographique de Vitold Belevitch, Nouvelle Biographie Nationale, Tome X, Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique, Bruxelles, pp. 35–42 (2010)
Courtois, P.J.: Vitold Belevitch (1921-1999), Témoignages et Réminisciences. Institutional Repository of the ‘Académie Universitaire Louvain’ (DIAL), (en préparation)
Fettweis, A.: In Memoriam, Vitold Belevitch. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems 47, 613–614 (2000)
Leavitt, D.: The Man Who Knew Too much. Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer, Phoenix (2006)
Linsman, M.: Les Machines Mathématiques. Bull. A.E.E.S. Liège, Technique et Humanisme 6, 279–294 (1954-1955)
Linsman, M., Pouliart, W.: La Machine mathématique IRSIA – FNRS, en construction à la Bell Telephone Mfg C. Industrie 8, 505–509 (1953)
Loeckx, J.: L’informatique en Belgique dans les années 1950 à 1970. Une rétrospective basée sur des réminiscences personnelles. Presses Universitaires de Namur, Namur (to appear, 2011)
Manneback, C., Brillouin L.: Les machines mathématiques aux Etats-Unis. Archives Dockx, Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, typed-script report (1947)
Mols, S., d’Udekem-Gevers, M.: Disseminating electronics: Bell Telephone and the emergence of electronic computing expertise in post-war Belgium, c1945-c1960. In: Histelcon Conference, Paris (2008)
Randell, B. (ed.): The Origins of Digital Computers. Selected Papers, 2nd edn. Springer, Heidelberg (1975)
Randell, B., Xu, J.: The Evolution of the Recovery Block Concept. In: Lyu, M. (ed.) Software Fault Tolerance. Trends in Software, pp. 1–22. J. Wiley, Chichester (1994)
Rojas, R.: How to make Zuse’s Z3 a universal computer. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 20(3), 51–54 (1998)
Storrer, F.: Amélioration du procédé de division utilisant l’itération de Newton-Raphson. Bull.Acad. Roy. Belg., Classe des Sc., 5e série, t. XLII, Bruxelles, pp. 30–33 (1956)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Courtois, PJ. (2011). The Belgian Electronic Mathematical Machine (1951-1962): An Account. In: Jones, C.B., Lloyd, J.L. (eds) Dependable and Historic Computing. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6875. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24541-1_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24541-1_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24540-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24541-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)