60yearssinceScotland’s first university computer
IT was the first university in Scotland to have an electronic computer.
Now, 60 years later, Glasgow University’s School of Computing Science is celebrating six decades of innovation.
In 1957, the university beat St Andrew’s and Edinburgh to the chase by a decade when it installed a Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine (DEUCE) in what was Scotland’s first Computer Laboratory.
St Andrews installed a machine in 1964 and Edinburgh took delivery of theirs in 1966.
The £50,000 DEUCE was shared by the entire department, and academics would feed punch cards into it and have to wait overnight to find out if the code worked.
Now, the department has, according to Dr Jeremy Singer, “hundreds of thousands” of computers from wireless sensors to powerful machines.
Dr Singer said: “Computers now are a million times more powerful, which is phenomenal. Over the past 60 years the scale and pace of technology has been incredible.
“Glasgow University has continued to be innovate and one area where we are particularly strong is our i nnovative teaching programme.
“We also have strong links to industry – such as Microsoft, JP Morgan and IBM.”
The computing department now works on four main sections: Glasgow Interactive Systems; formal analysis, theory and algorithms; information data and analysis; and Systems Research.
Dr David Manlove works under the section of formal analysis, theory and algorithms – and his work has life saving results.
Dr Manlove is responsible for developing a matching algorithm that has been used by NHS Blood and Transplant since 2008 to find “pairwise exchanges” and “three-way exchanges” for kidney transplants.
Since 2008 exchanges and cycles comprising 1107 transplants have been identified and 679 of those have proceeded to surgery.
It is estimated Dr Manlove’s research increased the number of kidney transplants under the NHS’s kidney exchange scheme by 148, between 2008 and 2015 and generated £35.5million total savings.
Dr Manlove said: “Our algorithm is constantly developing as the needs of the public are changing.
“We are also working with European colleagues and in the future we would hope to be able to carry out transplants across borders - although that is very far down the line.”
Dr Simon Rogers is one of the academics organising the 60th anniversary celebrations.
Dr Rogers said: “It is important for us to raise the profile of what the school has done and is doing.
“Sixty years is the whole history of computers and we are celebrating that too.”
Today the department will mark the occasion with seminars and an anniversary dinner.
And tomorrow, for anyone with an interest in computing science, academics will be at the Science Festival for Hands-On Session.
Between 11am and 4pm at the university there will be robots for children to play and a scale-model replica of the DEUCE.