Lesson plan
SAPO (computer)
The SAPO (short for Samočinný počítač, “automatic computer”) was the first Czechoslovak computer. It operated in the years 1957–1960 in Výzkumný ústav matematických strojů, part of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The computer was the first fault-tolerant computer – it had three parallel arithmetic logic units, which decided on the correct result by voting, an example of triple modular redundancy (if all three results were different, the operation was repeated). SAPO was designed between 1950 and 1956 by a team led by Czechoslovak cybernetics pioneer Antonín Svoboda. Svoboda had experience from building in the United States, where he worked at MIT until 1946. It was an electromechanical design with 7,000 relays and 400 vacuum tubes, and a magnetic drum memory with capacity of 1024 32-bit words. Each instruction had 5 operands (addresses) – 2 for arithmetic operands, one for result and addresses of next instruction in case of positive and negative result. It operated on binary floating point numbers. In 1960, after a spark from one of the relays ignited the greasing oil and the whole relay unit burnt down, it was decided not to repair the computer because of its obsolescence.
Article summary
The SAPO (short for Samočinný počítač, “automatic computer”) was the first Czechoslovak computer. It operated in the years 1957–1960 in Výzkumný ústav matematických strojů, part of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The computer was the first fault-tolerant computer – it had three parallel arithmetic logic units, which decided on the correct result by voting, an example of triple modular redundancy (if all three results were different, the operation was repeated). SAPO was designed between 1950 and 1956 by a team led by Czechoslovak cybernetics pioneer Antonín Svoboda. Svoboda had experience from building in the United States, where he worked at MIT until 1946. It was an electromechanical design with 7,000 relays and 400 vacuum tubes, and a magnetic drum memory with capacity of 1024 32-bit words. Each instruction had 5 operands (addresses) – 2 for arithmetic operands, one for result and addresses of next instruction in case of positive and negative result. It operated on binary floating point numbers. In 1960, after a spark from one of the relays ignited the greasing oil and the whole relay unit burnt down, it was decided not to repair the computer because of its obsolescence.
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.