From the South China Morning Post this week in: 1947
British science had come up with a new two-ton mechanical 'brain', hailed as 25 times smarter than its smartest American counterpart.
Dr M.V. Wilkes, director of the Cambridge University Mathematical Laboratory, said the university-built memory-monster was nearly finished.
'It may make discoveries in engineering, astronomy and atomic physics,' he told a reporter. 'It may even solve economic and philosophical problems too difficult for us. There are many vital questions we wish to put to it.'
The machine, he said, could handle 500 numbers of 10 decimal points. The best American brain, built in Philadelphia for the American Army, handled only 20 such numbers, he said.
The Cambridge brain has been nicknamed 'Edsac' because its full name, the scientist explained, is 'electronic delay storage calculator'.
It remembers by storing up electric and supersonic waves, each one representing a number, in a circuit of metal tubes filled with mercury.