The EDSAC Replica Project is building a replica of the Cambridge EDSAC Computer of 1949 for display at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, England. EDSAC was an early example of an electronic general purpose stored program computer, and the first to be run as service machine for users. Programs run on EDSAC contributed to the Nobel Prize winning work of John Kendrew on the molecular structure of myoglobin and Martin Ryle on the use of synthetic aperture radio astronomy. The project requires a considerable amount of research and development before construction can commence: there is no complete 'blueprint' to follow; instead, the design is being reconstructed from photographs and notebooks giving at best an incomplete record: the techniques of using thermionic valves to build digital circuits is a 'lost art' and a 'serial machine' the logical design of EDSAC is quite different to that of modern parallel machines. In his talk, Andrew will cover the history of EDSAC, the machine architecture, and progress to date on constructing the replica machine.

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