Find out what it was it like using the Elliott 903, a British minicomputer, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

About This Event:

Having first come into production in 1965, the Elliott 903 became an important British minicomputer during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alongside use in embedded systems where it was known variously as the 920B, 920M or ARCH 900, the Elliott 903 was popular for use in research laboratories and used to teach programming in Technical Colleges, smaller universities and some schools.

In this virtual talk, Dr Andrew Herbert will introduce the Elliott 903, its basic architecture, instruction set and the various programming languages provided (including the Symbolic Input Routine (SIR), Algol 60, FORTRAN and later CORAL66 and BASIC). This talk will also cover some of the standard packages provided with the Elliott 903, including: graph plotting, matrix manipulation, PERT, sorting and WORKSHOP a desktop calculator.

This talk will be illustrated using an emulator to demonstrate how programs were compiled and run on the Elliott 903, using several sample programs to highlight the range of programming languages and packages available to the users. Those with some technical knowledge and a basic understanding of programming may like to use this emulator to run programs from an archive of original Elliott software.

The talk will last for 45 minutes, followed by a 15 minute question and answer session.

Joining Information:

Joining information and a link to connect to this virtual talk via Zoom will be included in your booking confirmation email, generated by Eventbrite. Please check your spam folder if you have not received this. If you do not receive a booking confirmation email, please contact Emily Wager, our Events and Communications Officer, at emily.wager@tnmoc.org. This information will be shared with all attendees again via email on the day of the talk.