Definition
Ferranti Mark 2
The Ferranti Mark 2 was a successor to the Ferranti Mark 1, which was the world’s first commercially available general-purpose electronic digital computer. It was developed by the British electrical engineering firm Ferranti in collaboration with the University of Manchester.
Overview
The Ferranti series of computers represented the commercialisation of the Manchester Mark 1. Alan Turing was a key figure in the design of the original mark 1, famously insisting on the inclusion of a hardware random number generator—a feature that underscored his belief in the role of randomness in both biological and artificial intelligence.
Obs
Turing’s insistence on a random number instruction was a significant conceptual extension to the deterministic turing machine, allowing for stochastic algorithms that are now fundamental to modern artificial intelligence, such as stochastic gradient descent.
While the mark 1 was used for early simulations of morphogenesis and other biological processes, the Mark 2 continued the evolution of these early computing platforms towards greater reliability and performance.