History of NPL Computing
During the second half of the twentieth century, the use of computers transformed life in the developed world. NPL is one of the places that gave birth to modern computing; Alan Turing played a leading role and his plans led to the development of the Pilot ACE and ACE computers.
In the 1960s, NPL played a leading part in the marriage of computer and communications, with the development by Donald Davies of computer networks based on packet switching.
Significant Dates
1945 - Alan Turing joins NPL
1946 - Turing’s plans for ACE
1950 - Pilot ACE computer
1957 - ACE computer
1960 - Contribution to the development of ALGOL 60
1963 - Wilkinson’s work on error analysis
1964 - Cyclops: automatic character recognition – Pattern recognition
1966 - Proposal for digital communications network – Packet switching
1967 - Machine translation – from Russian to English
1970 - The NPL Network – first local-area network in the world
1971 - Scrapbook – pioneering combination of word processing,
electronic mail and hypertext
1980 - Pascal compiler validation
1987 - Conformance testing of communication protocols and data security
