Williams, Frederic Calland (1911-1977)

English electrical and electronics engineer who developed cathode-ray-tube storage devices used in many early computers.

He took part in building the first stored-program computer 1948. Knighted 1976.

Williams was born near Stockport, Cheshire, and studied at Manchester and Oxford. He was professor at Manchester from 1946.

During World War II, Williams played a major part in the development of radar and allied devices, and in the design of the feedback systems known as servomechanisms. Visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, he learned of attempts to use cathode-ray tubes to store information as dots on the screen, and in 1946 began to develop this system in the UK. The phosphor in the tubes allowed an image to persist for only a fraction of a second, and at first he transferred information to and from two tubes; later he designed the appropriate circuitry to repeat the dots in one tube so that they would persist indefinitely.

Together with Tom Kilburn, Williams built a computer which began operation in June 1948. After modification, the machine went into production with Ferranti Limited.

In the 1950s Williams began work on electrical machines, principally induction motors and induction-excited alternators. During his later years he worked on an automatic transmission for motor vehicles.