Accountant Sheilah Ablett operates a Burroughs E101 Electronic Computer at the British Institute of Management in London (December 4, 1956). Also known as the "Baby Brain," this $40,000 machine originally built by Electrodata in 1954 was designed mainly for engineering and scientific applications but also targeted at the bookkeeping and accounting markets, filling the gap between the low-priced calculators and expensive, high-end computers. It was a desk sized machine programmed by inserting a number of small metal pins into eight 10×38 cm removable pinboard units in a way that may have inspired Hasbro's Lite-Brite™ toy! The pins are dropped thru the marked holes in 16-row paper templates, these templates providing permanent program storage. Instructions may also be read from a 20cps punched paper tape input unit. Numerical input (Decimal numbers stored as 12 digits plus sign) was via an 11-column keyboard based on the Burroughs Sensimatic-20 bookkeeping machine, it had 220 words of internal data storage on magnetic drum, 29 single-address instructions, 128 program steps, 2 automatic address-modification counters with programmed limits, unconditional and 2 conditional transfer instructions. The speed of the E101 was 20 additions/sec and 4 multiplications/sec and the machine consumed 3000 watts of power using 163 vacuum tubes and 1,500 diodes.
Discover the Eulagisca Gigantea, a strange-looking creature found in Antarctica with a glittering golden mane that makes it look like it's from another planet. Scientists are studying this unique crustacean to learn more about its role in the delicate ecosystem of Antarctica