From CSIRAC to quantum computing, Australia's long running computing story

[FinnHalliday]

Theres a nice piece of context floating around tying Australias very first computer, CSIRAC, back to where the country stands today in the global quantum computing race, and the through line is a lot more interesting than just historical trivia

CSIRAC ran its first program back in November 1949, making it only the fourth stored program electronic computer ever built anywhere in the world, designed by CSIR scientists Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard, and it operated for roughly 30,000 hours across 700 projects before finally being retired in 1964, everything from weather forecasting to loan repayments to building design calculations

Its a genuinely wild machine by any modern standard, 2000 vacuum tubes filling a room the size of a double garage, consuming enough electricity to power a suburban street, and apparently even turning on an electric jug for tea in the same building could cause it to fail, yet it still ran a thousand times faster than the best mechanical calculators available at the time

The twist in the story that keeps getting highlighted is that Australia arguably missed the boat on the first computing revolution despite building CSIRAC so early, the country didnt really turn that early advantage into a dominant computing industry the way the US and UK eventually did

But the same cannot be said for quantum computing, Australia has spent over 25 years building serious research depth through groups like the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology and researchers like Michelle Simmons at UNSW, and CSIRO modelling from a few years back projected quantum computing could generate several billion dollars in Australian revenue and thousands of new high skilled jobs by the mid 2040s

Its a nice bit of national tech history that doubles as a genuine cautionary tale, being first doesnt guarantee staying relevant, but having decades of sustained focus on a hard technical problem can put a country in a genuinely strong position the second time around

Governments have spent billions on quantum computers. Has AI usurped them?www.abc.net.au

[Wasp]

The detail about turning on an electric jug for tea causing CSIRAC to fail is such a perfect snapshot of just how fragile and janky early computing really was, makes modern hardware reliability look like magic by comparison

[Always_Craig96]

Missing the boat on computing but potentially leading on quantum is such an interesting redemption arc for a countrys tech history, shows that early advantage doesnt automatically compound the way people assume it does