Land of the Living

Cadet

The Harwell CADET was the first fully transistorised computer in Europe, and may have been the first fully transistorised computer in the world. The electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, UK built the Harwell Dekatron Computer in 1951, which was an automatic calculator where the decimal arithmetic and memory were electronic, although other functions were performed by relays. By 1953, it was evident that this did not meet AERE's computing needs, and AERE director Sir John Cockcroft encouraged them to design and build a computer using transistors throughout. E. H. Cooke-Yarborough based the design around a 64-kilobyte (65,536 bytes) magnetic drum memory store with multiple moving heads that had been designed at the National… more »