Thursday 9th April 2026 – Club Meeting – Speaker – Tim Banks with his presentation on The Manchester ‘Baby’ Computer.
Tim Banks
Tim started off by assuring members that it wouldn’t be a particularly technical talk but would focus on the historical facts and their importance in the history of the world we inhabit today.
Tim himself had worked in electronics and telecommunications but spends his retirement as a volunteer at Manchester’s Museum of Science & Industry. It was a role solely attached to the replica working model of the original Manchester University ‘Baby’ Computer and he was tasked to talk to visitors, many of them from overseas, and to help them understand how it worked and explain its importance in the evolution of computing machines.
Tim showed a short BBC newsreel film from 1949 and commented that it was hard to imagine a time like that when computers just didn’t exist. A family’s only adventure in electronics then was via their home radio receiver listening mainly to the BBC. Some degree of mechanical number crunching did happen but in secretive establishments such as Bletchley Park which led the way during the war years with machines such as ‘Colossus’. Mathematicians otherwise used logarithm tables and slide rules to slowly work out complex tasks. In the early days of the introduction of computing into business and government the machines were often task specific, enormous in size and rather inflexible. But one over-riding problem was that these early machines had no memory in the same way as the human brain so the Manchester ‘Baby’ was the first attempt to solve that shortcoming.
The main individuals in the development of this new conceptual machine were Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn. Both men from the North of England, Freddie Williams was from Romiley and studied at Stockport Grammar before progressing through Manchester University before WW2. Tom Kilburn was from Dewsbury in West Yorkshire and the two men met while on secondment at the Post Office Telecommunications Establishment during the war. After the war Freddie was asked to head up the Electronic Engineering Department at Manchester University and he persuaded Tom Kilburn to join him In the Mathematics area. Manchester also drew Max Newman away from Bletchley Park and eventually Alan Turing joined him in Manchester and they were complicit in creating the Computer Sciences Department. The Manchester ‘Baby’ machine relied on a cathode ray tube to store a limited memory but it was sufficient to prove that programmable memory was a viable concept for computing machines going forward. Eventually the Manchester team created the first magnetic computer disc drive.
Tim listed the Baby’s short specification data which was limited to a 32 bit number and the whole machine with many valves used 2.5 kilowatts of energy to run. The construction of the ‘Baby’ replica was helped by very limited records but a committee of individuals came to help the process including an engineer who had helped construct the original. As part of the build, the team were conscious of the need to source as many spare parts as possible to allow the ‘Baby’ replica to endure well into the future.
Wednesday 8th April 2026 – Bowling – Macclesfield 2/Alderley Edge v Knutsford Rex
A warm sunny afternoon welcomed the bowlers to the most picturesque of greens at Siddington Village Hall. This year Macclesfield 2 Probus have joined forces with Alderley Edge Probus due to the dwindling of available players. So, it was an unknown challenge for the Rex team but they still showed their superiority by coming out with a victory of 74 points to 45. A special mention has to be made to the pairing of Trevor Bethell and Alan Allcock who were at the end of a 14-5 scoreline to come out victorious 15-14.
Thursday 2nd April 2026 – Walk – Astbury Country Park
On a beautiful spring day the Group set off on a walk of about five and a half miles, a bit longer than usual. The route was along parts of the Macclesfield Canal & to enjoy a view of the Mow Cop. Turning back along the country lanes and on to the lake at the Country Park with the Astbury Church Spire always present as a distant point of reference. Afterwards the Group enjoyed a nice lunch at the Egerton Arms in Astbury.