Summary

Drawings in hard copy relating to the computer CSIRAC. The digital versions of the drawings are listed in HT 13520

The majority of items in this series originated in the Division of Radiophysics of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), located in Sydney. During 1949 CSIR became the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

After CSIRAC moved to Melbourne during 1955, further items were produced by members of the engineering staff of the Computation Laboratory of the University of Melbourne, and there were several copies of drawings produced by the Division of Building Research, CSIRO located at Highett.

When CSIRAC was decommissioned in November 1964 it was carefully dismantled, and along with all the associated drawings and engineering log books was donated by Dr Frank Hirst to the National Science Museum of Victoria.

In 1996 a team, which included some members who had maintained CSIRAC, were successful in locating all the dismantled CSIRAC which were then being held in storage at Maribryrong. The computer was reassembled as a static display in the Computer Science Department of the University of Melbourne during the 'CSIRAC Celebration' held in June 1996.
The detailed search through all of the relevant storage area when locating and identifying the CSIRAC items failed to locate any of the computer drawings or log books. The fact (that) these important items were missing was emphasised during the two-day seminar associated with the 'CSIRAC Celebration', in the hope someone may have some information on their whereabouts. CSIRAC had been shifted several times since 1964 and for some years from 1980 had been on static display at the Caulfield Institute of Technology, as arranged by the School of Computing and Information Services, with the co-operation of the Science Museum of Victoria.

The missing drawings were subsequently located at Caulfield, but as yet (2009), the log books have not been found.

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