Mobile menu icon
Skip to navigation | Skip to main content | Skip to footer
Mobile menu icon Search iconSearch
Search type

Department of Computer Science

History in depth

From the pioneering Baby computer to the world-renowned work of Alan Turing, computer science at Manchester has changed the world.

Find out more about the early work carried out by the Department of Computer Science by exploring the features below.

Tales of Manchester's history

Watch the clips below to get an idea of Manchester's history; including the Ferranti Atlas supercomputer and Tom Kilburn reflecting on his groundbreaking work.

Loading

    Celebrating our heritage

    Explore the commemorative events and website features that detail events from our Department's history in further detail.

    Further resources

    Here are a range of online resources that delve even further into computer history:

    External links

    Different uses for computers

    From the outset, Manchester computers were used for many different things. As well as Alan Turing’s chess algorithms, the earliest remaining recoding of computer music was made by the Manchester Mk1 computer in 1951 at the same time as some of the earliest known computer generated love letters.

    History collections

    The replica Baby computer can be seen in the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester.

    To learn more about computer history, there are many museums with important collections including: