Initiatives

The Pearcey Foundation is actively involved in many initiatives to help promote and accelerate the Australian ICT industry.

 


The Pearcey Foundation is involved in many projects important to the ICT industry.

Heritage Project - an expansive program to document and capture Australia's ICT heritage including a book, online resources and even a virtual museum.

Pearcey Institute - to perform research and studies relating to the impact of ICT in industry and society. These in-depth examinations are an important input into policy discussions.

Public Policy - Bringing together of fragmented ICT groups through forums and debates to help analyse, formulate and review policies relating to ICT and the digital economy.

CSIRAC - dedicated to the preservation and promotion of CSIRAC, as one of the world's first stored program digital computers and the first computer to play music.

Computing History - small projects that help preserve and promote Australia's computing history and contributions to global technology advancements.

 

Initiatives

Dec 31, 2021

Summary of Public Policy Contributions

The Pearcey Foundation is actively involved in contributing to thought leadership in ICT issues e.g. economic studies, digital economy benefits.

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Dec 27, 2021

Historical Papers

This section contains a collection of papers and notes about Australian ICT history.

Dec 23, 2021

CSIRAC - Among the First Electronic Stored Program Computers

In historical terms, CSIR Mk1/CSIRAC was one of the first stored program, electronic, computers.

Prior to 1948 various electromechanical machines (non-electronic computers) were built in USA and Germany. Early electronic, but not stored program machines, were ENIAC (USA) and numerous Colossuses (Colossi?) at Bletchley Park (UK).

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Nov 29, 2021

Early Australian Internet

In 1986, a year after the Internet domain name system was deployed, Australia's.au country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) came into being at the approval of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (performing IANA's function at the time).

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Jun 15, 2021

CSIRAC: How to name your computer

On June 14, 1956 the computer CSIRAC was officially recommissioned at the new Computation Laboratory at the University of Melbourne.

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Nov 29, 2020

Connections in the History of Australian Computing

This paper gives an overview of early Australian computing milestones up to about 1970 and demonstrates a mesh of influences. Wartime radar, initially from Britain, provided basic experience for many computing engineers. This is an excellent perspective on how Australia influenced the development of the digital computer as we know it today.

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