THE press dubbed them "brain machines". And when computers were delivered to six British universities 50 years ago, they heralded the dawn of a technological revolution.

Computing was very much in its infancy.

Manchester University made the first, Cambridge built one too – but a huge Government investment in 1957 kick-started academic computing, enabling state-of the-art factory-built machines to be installed at other universities including Leeds.

It was a huge risk, as Professor Roger Boyle, modern-day head of computing at the University of Leeds, explained: "They had no way of knowing if this was a good idea or not."

The Leeds machine, dubbed Lucifer, cost £50,000 and was as far removed from the modern day laptop as could be imagined.

It was installed in a disused Methodist Chapel on the edge of campus, where a new concrete floor was laid to take its weight and minimise vibration. "It was enormous,"

Winch

Mr Boyle explained. "They had to winch many of the components through the roof."

"There were no transistors – it was all valves and glowing lights – and came with armies of personnel, who had to carry out a daily maintenance programme."

The name Lucifer was derived from Leeds University Computing Installation (Ferranti).

The machine was a Pegasus One, built by Ferranti at Gorton, Manchester. In 1957, a Pegasus computer was used to calculate pi to 7,480 decimal places – a record at the time.

Sandy Douglas, who had worked on the Cambridge computer, was recruited to head up the Leeds team.

Programming was done by paper tape.

"They would feed the tape into the machine, wait while it thought about it, often for hours – and then the answer would be spat out on more paper tape."

And though by modern standards its memory was tiny and its processing speed slow, Lucifer enabled Leeds researchers to make complex calculations far more quickly than was possible using pencils, paper and slide rules.

"It could do 12-figure multiplications in a fraction of a second," added Mr Boyle.

Fraction

"This made it a really valuable tool for physicists and mathematicians. Our machine was also used by chemists who needed its power for their work in crystallography."

Lucifer was used to produce the software which led to the world's first computerised train schedule in 1963.

Mr Boyle said time spent on the early computer was very precious. "In the 1950s, if you were a computer user, you were among the university elite."

Leeds remains a centre of excellence for computer science, artificial intelligence and informatics.

On Friday, former staff and students, including some from the department's pioneering early days, will return to the campus the mark Lucifer's jubilee.

Later in the year, the university will bestow an honorary doctorate of engineering on Emeritus Professor Tony Wren in recognition of his world-leading work on transport scheduling which began in Leeds.