The first computer I did serious work on was an English Electric Deuce computer -- a commercial version of the famous (?) Ace computer that Turing helped to design. It had vacuum tubes, a drum (retrofitted), and mercury delay lines. Storage was in "chinese binary" (most sig bit on right). Programming was in autocode -- a slight step up from assembly language -- with 5 hole paper tape as input. User input to give signals to the program was via a rotary telephone dial.

Dave

Prof. David Brown