- 1945
Trevor Pearcey sees Howard Aiken’s Mk1 (or Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator) at Harvard, and decides that paper tape-based systems are too slow, and that a fully electronic design would be superior.
- 1946
Trevor Pearcey begins to formulate the logical planning for an “Automatic Computer” .
- 1946
Chief of Radiophysics Edward Bowen and Assistant Chief Joseph Pawsey decided on radioastronomy and rain-physics as the two main areas of research, with a third, radio propagation dropped in favour of the development of electronic computing.
- 1948
Construction of the Mk1 computer begins with Maston Beard in charge of engineering and Trevor Pearcey covering the logical design.
- 1949
First test program is run in late November — a long multiplication routine.
- 1951
Brian Cooper constructs a drum-based secondary storage unit, and begins to construct a larger drum-based device with greater capacity.
- 1951
The Mk1 is publicly demonstrated.
- 1951
Music first played on the Mk1.
- 1953
Reginald Ryan doubles the Mk1’s mercury delay line storage capacity to 1024 words.
- 1955
Maston Beard designs a disk-type secondary storage unit, abandoning Brian Cooper’s second drum-type design.
- 1954
Maston Beard with the assistance of Geoff Chandler completely redesigns the main memory circuits which were designated MKII.
- 1955
The Mk1 is dismantled for shipment to Melbourne.
- 1956
June 14. The Computation Laboratory is opened at the University of Melbourne and the machine is renamed “CSIRAC” .
- 1964
CSIRAC is decommissioned and donated to the Museum of Victoria. It is replaced by an IBM 7044.
- 1980’s
CSIRAC is removed from storage and placed on display at Caulfield (later Chisolm) Institute of Technology (now Caulfield campus, Monash University).
- 1992
CSIRAC is returned to storage in the Museum of Victoria.
- 1996
In June the machine is placed on display at the University of Melbourne, as part of the 40th Anniversary Celebration of CSIRAC arriving in Melbourne.
- 1996
In December, CSIRAC is placed back into storage at the Scienceworks Museum, Spotswood.
- 2001
CSIRAC is on permanent display at Museum Victoria, Carlton Gardens, Melbourne.