CSIRAC was the first computer in an Australian University and the first in Victoria. It provided a computing service to scientists,
engineers and the Melbourne business community until 1964.
CSIRAC still exists intact and is on display at Museum Victoria: CSIRAC, making it the oldest surviving electronic computer in the world.
An excellent book about CSIRAC is Last Of The First, by Doug McCann and Peter Thorne. This book provides a comprehensive overview of CSIRAC, published by the University of Melbourne, and available free as a PDF (4.9 MB).
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).
On June 14, 1956 the computer CSIRAC was officially recommissioned at the new Computation Laboratory at the University of Melbourne.
Press Release 21 February 2012 – Melbourne, Australia: The new world of computer science met the old in late January when senior executives from CSIRO’s ICT Centre paid a visit to CSIRAC. “I first saw CSIRAC when I was in Melbourne on holiday recently,” said ICT Centre Director Dr Ian Oppermann. “I was truly inspired by its complexity and power and hoped it would similarly move my colleagues so I wrote an excursion to the museum into our meeting schedule.”
