Background
The first program to be executed calculated the highest common factor of two integers and ran correctly on the
21st June 1948. After this date, the experimental machine was expanded upon and led to the development of the
Manchester Mark 1 and later the Ferranti computers. In preparation for the 50th anniversary of the first program's
execution, a replica of the original machine was built at Manchester by a team lead by Christopher Burton a member
of the Manchester Computer Conservation Society. Christopher was of great help in advising on matters of historical
accuracy for this simulator of the Baby.
The Baby's switch panel, taken in December 1948
Simulation
Unlike most other simulators that exist (including one I developed previously for
RISC OS) this attempts to accurately simulate the switch panels that were used to laboriously program the machine
along with many of the idiosyncracies that would have resulted from its incorrect use.
The program is written in java
and requires a JVM supporting Java 1.2 or later to be installed. Full source code is included, as is a detailed user
guide and an indepth discussion of the historical accuracy of the simulator. The simulator was written for the History
of Computing course as part of my BSc in Computer Science at the University of
Warwick.
The simulator's tube
The simulators's switch panel
future development
Alan Burlison has done some excellent work tidying up the source code and annotating it with javadoc comments
with a view to perhaps pushing the simulator a little further. Alan has visited the replica machine and has
some interesting comments and some very good photographs on his
blog.
One particular idea that we'd like to implement if we can find the time and resources is a photo-realistic user interface
of the tube and control panels built up from high quality photographs of the replica machine.