The First Computer Comes To India


Teacher and Head of the Electronics and Communications Unit of

ISI, the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, Dr. Dwijish Dutta Majumdar,

grinned feebly as we shook hands. At 53 he was bespectacled, hair swept back,

somewhat substantial in the center which you notice just when he holds up. There were

at any rate 40 kgs of paper on the table, quite a bit of which had a solid bearing on

fields as assorted as picture preparing to design acknowledgment and counterfeit

knowledge to the multi-esteemed rationale of fluffy science.

Dr. Majumdar or DDM is a foundation inside an establishment. In

the following three hours, he took us on a directed voyage through what ought to be a

the mandatory subject in starting each computer proficient in India.

No. It was not simply the first 'computer for India to be

brought here in 1995, it was the first in Asia, outside Japan. DDM illuminates a

Wills Navy Cut cigarette and includes that ISI had the differentiation of building up the

first Indian simple computer too. Nehru came to meet the computer that

unraveled a 10 x 10 single-precision framework in an hour and a half. It was worked with

military transfer.

The first of the two computerized computers in India was moreover

introduced here. Towards the finish of 1955, came the HEC-2M, a monster bit of

hardware that set sail from England in two boxes. No one knows the amount it

weighted in any case, indeed, it took around two months for ISI individuals to introduce the 1K

memory, tube-based framework. It was not the times of assembling by hundreds and

thousands. This was uniquely made and planned by Professor AD Booth at Birk

Bak College in the UK.

Two youngsters were sent by Prof Mahalanobis to get prepared by

Prof Booth himself in introducing and dealing with the hardware.

One was Prof MM Mukherjee and the other was Amaresh Roy. Might I be able to

meet them, I enquired, breaking DDM's wistfulness. He halted for a minute.

Watched out of the dark December window. No, Mr. Roy is no more and Prof Mukherjee

has left the nation and now lives with his child in the USA.

The HEC-2M was a 16-piece machine. With 16 directions. It

worked in machine code with its drum memory of 1024 words. A portion of the twofold precision was there with 32 bits registers. It didn't have a printer or a tape.

It utilized punched cards and gave out punched cards, till ISI fixed a printer. Was

it part of an award? DDM remembers, "It was acquired. I think it was

around Rs 2 lakh and you realize what Rs 2 lakh was in 1955!"

Housed in a cooled space of around 300 square feet, the

HEC-2M 'worked'. Logical issues poured in from all pieces of the

nation, including a great deal of work from the Defense, generally for direction

investigation for mounted guns. DDM recollects affectionately, "It most became the

National Computational Center of India."

In 1958, with an award from the UNTAB (United Nations Technical

Help Board), ISI got a computer named after the mountain scope of the

nation of its inception—URAL. It came from Russia with a couple of things over the

HEC-2M. Likewise, dissimilar to HEC-2M, it was joined by a group of Russian specialists.

It had a 32-piece word size, an even magtape, a punched

celluloid tape, 2 Kb of memory and a printer that made "strange

sounds".

Now, Ashok Dasgupta participate. Presently 52, he is one of the

rare sorts of people who can offer a firsthand record of the sentiments of the '50s. Dasgupta

was associated with both HEC-2M and URAL from "opening the pressing box"

that came by transport.

Indeed, there was a proper festival yet he can't review the

subtleties. How was it to be related with India's first computer in 1955?

Dasgupta took a puff of his Regent Regular and educated us that his family took

monstrous pride that he was related with the main computer in the nation.

Today, Biswanath Das is turning gray. In 1956, he was a peon in the

ISI Computer Group. Thirty years after, he is still with DDM, presently in the

Gadgets and Communication Sciences Unit. Das looked through his focal points and

all of a sudden his rough looking face lit up in bliss. "Goodness, you are discussing

URAL and HEC-2M? Truly, I was there and we worked late evenings for them. We were

happy with their appearance, and especially with that of HEC-2M." For

Das and for some others, it was not 'the' URAL or, 'the' HEC-2M. In

memory, they are practically similar to family pets who were around for such a long

time. Both were utilized well till 1964 when IBM introduced 1401 here. What's more, with

that occasion, India's first two computers were given a rest.

Might one be able to take a quick trip and see them, I enquired. For a minute each of the three

individuals became shockingly calm. They were destroyed and tossed hopelessly

in certain godowns long back, I was told. Today it may not be conceivable to modify

them past odds and ends.

ISI has never thought of keeping any keepsake around it like

conceivably the first card punched by it. "I had thought of making a historical center to

safeguard them yet it couldn't occur. On the off chance that somebody comes, I will follow

them from any place they are and give the remaining parts from safeguarding," a

meditative DDM comments. Selfishness to history ins firm-wired in the fundamental filaments

of the country,