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From: faiman@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Mercury delay lines
Message-ID: <3300136@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 11 Jun 90 20:12:00 GMT
References: <3040@softway.oz>
Lines: 12
Nf-ID: #R:softway.oz:3040:m.cs.uiuc.edu:3300136:000:598
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!faiman    Jun 11 15:12:00 1990



The mercury delay line was an early form of serial memory.  Aside from EDSAC,
another early British machine to use mercury lines was LEO (Lyons Electronic
Office).  Nickel magnetostrictive delay lines soon replaced the mercury
type, as being smaller, cheaper, and less dangerous.  I remember a machine
at Elliott's back in the late 50's called Nicholas, on account of its nickel
delay line memory.  The Elliott 802 and 803, both serial machines, also used
nickel lines, but only to pad out the lengths of their CPU registers; their
memories were core.

 -- Mike Faiman, Urbana		faiman@cs.uiuc.edu