{"id":351,"date":"2014-01-22T17:50:18","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T17:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/?p=351"},"modified":"2014-01-22T17:50:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T17:50:18","slug":"the-ferranti-pegasus-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/2014\/01\/22\/the-ferranti-pegasus-computer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ferranti Pegasus Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the Wings of White-Heat<\/h2>\n
\"A<\/a>

The Ferranti Pegasus no.25 (1956) by Marcin Wichary
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence.<\/p><\/div>\n

It may appear an unsightly cross between a Mark I Mini and a set of metallic wardrobes, but within its architecture the Ferranti Pegasus heralds the birth of something which continues to alter the lives of millions \u2013 this writer at this moment included \u2013 in the 21st<\/sup> century: desktop computing. Though the Pegasus, requiring an organised cooling system, dedicated power supply and a large room to operate, is some distance away from what would eventually come to ply such desktops, it is something \u2013 possessing both the first general purpose CPU and digital Draughts-playing programme \u2013 of a cultural and technological precursor in regard to its use of science for more <\/i>casual ends.<\/p>\n

To explore this further, we can first look towards what the Ferranti Pegasus was not<\/i>. Primarily, it was not Alan Turing\u2019s seminal ACE, with its eventual use \u2013 to extract accurate aircraft trajectory readings for the benefit of developing anti-aircraft measures \u2013 ensuring it, in its varying guises, remained firmly in the grasp of the Radar Research and Development Establishment. Nor was it Manchester University\u2019s ATLAS; a direct, state-fuelled response to IBM\u2019s offerings to both the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and NSA in the mid-1950s. It was also not, much unlike the code breaking and aptly-named Colossus Mark 1, something intended solely<\/i> to extend the reach of the British military.<\/p>\n

Yet the Pegasus \u2013 a medium-sized automatic digital computer \u2013 was born out of this context; a collective, underlying market emphasis upon mathematics, military capabilities and scientific research. Co-creator Christopher Strachey had a differing vision for the Pegasus; it was to be a logic-problem<\/i> solving computer. From this point forth, challenges of a more practical nature \u2013 such as that posed by hosting the Royal Insurance Company\u2019s expansive database, calculating the SR.53\u2019s tail plane strength and playing Draughts \u2013 took precedence above the prospect of facilitating effective radar reconnaissance in its development. Instead, the Pegasus \u2013 with its accompanying programming manual drawing specific attention to the computer\u2019s capacity to be used for \u2018business and commercial data-processing, in technical [and] in educational work\u2019 \u2013 saw the significance of the scientist following<\/i> production fade. This, in line with Strachey\u2019s commitment to logic-problem solving, was replaced by a new commitment to end-user-friendly design naturally suited to wider public use. The notion of the consuming, working citizen \u2013 served by an emphasis upon what Pegasus developer Ian Merry termed \u2018reliability, economy and performance\u2019 in a 1992 seminar \u2013 now acting as a genuine force of production upon the output of science.<\/p>\n

But if the post-war citizen was now to alter, if only in part,\u00a0 science\u2019s product here, science \u2013 with some state assistance \u2013 would come to ensure this relationship became one firmly entrenched in reciprocation.<\/p>\n

The commercial uses envisaged in the Pegasus programming manual proved eminently compatible with the prevailing aims of the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC): the government body charged with remedying the stark disparity between superior public sector technology and that found in private industry. Whilst their interest in the Pegasus would not go untested (see Anthony Gandy\u2019s The Early Computer Industry<\/i>) their determination proved not to be misplaced, being fuelled by a growing, pressing realisation. This epiphany was \u2013 as Simon Lavington paraphrases then Elliot Brothers MD Leon Bagrit in his book Alan Turing and His Contemporaries<\/i> \u2013 that digital computing possessed the capacity \u2018to be widely used [for] all sorts of manufacturing processes, making decisions and adjustments that had previously been carried out by human operators\u2019. G.E. Felton\u2019s reference to a \u2018technological explosion\u2019 in the preface to the programming manual amounted to a direct nod towards this potential; a disseminating of science\u2019s new, digitised capability into the wider public domain. As per the NRDC\u2019s mission statement, by the time the last of the 38 Pegasus units were sold in 1964, only 6 had found their way into government research departments. With the financial strength of the NRDC in mind, the specific fate of the remaining 32 Pegasus units from 1956-1964 \u2013 to operate within the realms of academia, banking, insurance and civilian aviation \u2013 thus came to be so not out of Ferranti\u2019s sole desire, but also<\/i> that of a willing state fuelling their endeavour. Alas, the old, dominant forces of production continued to hold some sway.<\/p>\n

But this story \u2013 of the Ferranti Pegasus, science and the post-war citizen \u2013 is not one of failure. When Bellerophon fell from his steed\u2019s back, Pegasus was transformed by Zeus to exist forever as an omnipresent constellation, a looming, deified past. A similar, if marginally subdued fate was to befall our thermionic-valve computer as it swapped the offices of the Skandia Insurance Company for the retirement care of the Science Museum.<\/p>\n

The Pegasus and its offspring \u2013 the Ferranti Perseus, Sirius and Orion \u2013 galloped into the white-hot embrace of a Labour government now committed to \u2018full planning and mobilisation of scientific resources\u2019 supported by the new Ministry of Technology established the year of Ferranti\u2019s final Pegasus sale. If this NRDC-esque mobilisation was to \u2013 as further asserted in Harold Wilson\u2019s party conference speech of 1963 \u2013 \u2018produce the new instruments and tools of economic advance\u2019 as part of a \u2018scientific revolution\u2019, computing innovations \u00e1 la that achieved by Strachey, Ferranti and the NRDC would come to see the symbiotic relationship between science and the post-war citizen strengthened ever further.<\/p>\n

Though this was a fledgling relationship \u2013 between man, machine and automation \u2013 that would require some future cultivation, its roots were laid with the Ferranti Pegasus; science forging, with a government push, a commercial, digital identity which would eventually come to be merged with that of the post-war citizen over the remainder of the 20th<\/sup> Century. \u00a0IBM \u2013 with their faster, smaller, sleeker machines \u2013 would soon emerge from across the Atlantic for the first time. By way of a high-profile entrance into a now warmly receptive (if not white-hot<\/i>) British market they would quickly, as Lavington asserts, \u2018change things forever\u2019. But the influence of the Ferranti Pegasus remained; the underlying warmth of this climate was something for which IBM would have \u2013 as much as they did for their units\u2019 now familiar general purpose CPUs \u2013 our trailblazing, Draughts-playing, flying horse to thank.<\/p>\n

Luke Shoveller<\/p>\n

Second Year Undergraduate.<\/p>\n

Member of the Science, Power and Politics in Twentieth Century Britain module.<\/p>\n

Further Information:<\/b><\/p>\n

Flamm, Kenneth, Creating the Computer: Government, Industry and High Technology<\/i>, (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1988)<\/p>\n

Gandy, Anthony, The Early Computer Industry: Limitations of Scale and Scope<\/i>, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)<\/p>\n

The Labour Party, Science and the Future of Britain<\/i>, (London: The Labour Party, 1964)<\/p>\n

Lavington, Simon and The Chartered Institute for IT BCS, Alan Turing and His Contemporaries: Building the World’s First Computers<\/i>, (Swindon: British Informatics Society Ltd, 2012)<\/p>\n

Spinardi, Graham, \u2018Civic Spinoff From Defence Research Establishments\u2019, in Bud, Robert & Gummett, Phillip, and Science Museum (Great Britain),\u00a0Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain’s Defence Laboratories, 1945-1990<\/i>, (London: Science Museum, 2002), pp.371-390<\/p>\n

Photo link:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mwichary\/2290052630\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Wings of White-Heat It may appear an unsightly cross between a Mark I Mini and a set of metallic wardrobes, but within its architecture the Ferranti Pegasus heralds the birth of something which continues to alter the lives of millions \u2013 this writer at this moment included \u2013 in the 21st century: desktop … <\/p>\n

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