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TheCyclone is avacuum-tube computer, built byIowa State College (later University) at Ames, Iowa. The computer was commissioned in July 1959. It was based on theIAS architecture developed byJohn von Neumann. The Cyclone was based onILLIAC, theUniversity of Illinois Automatic Computer. The Cyclone used 40-bit words, used two 20-bit instructions per word, and each instruction had an eight-bitop-code and a 12-bit operand or address field. In general IAS-based computers were not code compatible with each other, although originally math routines which ran on the ILLIAC would also run on the Cyclone.
The Cyclone was completed just as the transistor was replacing the vacuum tube as an active computing element. The Cyclone had about 2,500 vacuum tubes, 1,521 of which were type 5844. (TheIBM 1401 computer, announced the same year, was fully transistorized. About 15,000 IBM 1401 machines were produced.)
The supervisor of the Cyclone computer construction was Dr. R. M. Stewart, a professor of physics at ISC (now ISU). Thepaper-tape input was upgraded with an optical character reader using a high-speed stepper motor, again by a person from the Physics Department. Robert Asbury Sharpe organized and taught courses for interested faculty and wrote anassembler as well as anALGOL compiler for the Cyclone.
The Cyclone solved 40 equations with 40 unknowns in less than four minutes. This was the same type of problem that theAtanasoff–Berry Computer was designed to solve twenty years earlier at the same college.
The Cyclone computer was 10 feet tall, 12 feet long, 3 feet wide, and contained over 2,700 vacuum tubes. It used 19 kW of electric power and weighed about 5,000 pounds (2.5 short tons; 2.3 t). "Good time" was about 40 hours per week.
The original Cyclone had:
The Cyclone had a major rebuild about 1961:
Both versions had features and limitations:
The only input device was the paper tape reader and the only outputs were the console printer and paper tape punch. As the paper tape punch was much faster than the printer, most output was punched, and then listed on an off-line printer.
The Iowa State Cyclone is distinct from theAtanasoff–Berry Computer of the late 1930s - neitherJohn Vincent Atanasoff norClifford Berry worked on this machine.
1) "A Third Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems"Report No. 1115, March 1961by Martin H. Weik,published by Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland
2) "A Fourth Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems"Report No. 1227, January 1964by Martin H. Weik,published by Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland
3)LaFarr Stuart was an economics graduate student and also wrote test programs and utilities during and after the development of the second version of the Cyclone. LaFarr wrote the assembler in machine code as there was no machine for a cross assembler. Also wrote a music program, see External links.