Manchester is proud to be the birthplace of modern computing. The School of Computer Science, the University of Manchester and sponsors successfully hosted the 60th anniversary events as an opportunity to run various activities to celebrate this landmark achievement.
These activities culminated on Friday June 20th 2008 when the School was joined by current staff and students, industrial partners, over 500 hundred school children and alumni, who joined the celebrations.
Schools Digital 60 Day
09:45 - 15:30The day was hosted both for national schools who participated in our Computer Animation Competition, and for schools who are interested in raising the profile of computing with their students. Competition winners were awarded various prizes at the Computer Animation Festival.
Activities included a live video-link up with MOSI (Manchester Museum of Science and Industry), the Animation Festival (film show of short-listed entries and Awards Ceremony), and the "cs4fn Magic Show".
The Industrial Forum
17:00 – 17:45Friends of the School, alumni, original "Baby" scientists and industrial partners were invited to attend an 60th Anniversary Drinks Reception in Crawford House. The Poster exhibition and various demonstrations highlighted the research currently being carried out in the School, introducing the School of Computer Science and all its myriad activities to industrial partners. It is often the case that outside organisations are only aware of one aspect of our work and are unaware of the many ways in which industry and the school can form mutually beneficial partnerships and collaborations in research, consultancy, secondments, staff development, internship programmes, graduate recruitment and syllabus creation.
The Kilburn Lecture and Medal Ceremony
17:55 – 19:15The reception was followed a Medal Presentation Ceremony by the University of Manchester and the Computer Conservation Society, awarded to the pioneers who were involved in designing and developing the ‘Baby’. This was followed by the Digital60 Kilburn Lecture.
Speaker: Professor Steve
Furber CBE.
Abstract: "The
Relentless March of the Microchip".
The first sixty years of computing have seen spectacular progress in the technology, driven for the last forty years by Moore's Law which, though initially an observation, has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and a board-room planning tool. Ever shrinking transistor dimensions have yielded increasingly complex and cost-effective microchips, a win-win scenario that has driven the explosion in the use of digital electronics and enabled computers to be embedded into a vast range of high-volume products.
