The instruction store consisted of twelve mercury delay lines, each of 32 words, and numbered 1 to 12.
2.
It had a words of 45 bits each ( plus one parity bit ), using mercury delay line memory.
3.
FLAC II abandoned mercury delay line memory in favor of a faster and more versatile 4096-word magnetic core memory.
4.
In 1945, Gordon D . Forbes and Herbert Shapiro filed a patent for the a mercury delay line with piezoelectric transducers.
5.
Pulses were sent into the mercury delay line at one end, and took a certain amount of time to reach the other end.
6.
By contrast, mercury delay line memory was slower and not truly random access, as the bits were presented serially, which complicated programming.
7.
Employing approximately 1, 700 vacuum tubes, the computer's ultrasonic mercury delay line memory of 255 words, with an average access time of 500 microseconds.
8.
Mercury delay lines operated at about the speed of sound, so were very slow in computer terms, even by the standards of the computers of the late 1940s and 1950s.
9.
However, in view of the great promise of the mercury delay lines he obtained authorization for a new and separate contract calling for a new machine, using these delay lines.
10.
Several types of memory were acquired, including core memory, plasma cell memory, rope memory, selectron tube, magnetic cards, mercury delay line, and fixed-head drum.
