BARK

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This article is about the Binary Arithmetic Relay Calculator. For the protein often abbreviated BARK, see Beta adrenergic receptor kinase.

BARK (Binär Aritmetisk Relä-Kalkylator, Swedish for "Binary Arithmetic Relay Calculator") was completed in February 1950 at a cost of 400.000 Swedish kronor. BARK was a 32-bit machine and could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms. It had a memory with 50 registers and 100 constants. It was later expanded to double the memory. BARK was built using standard phone relays.

The machine was built with 8000 relays, 80 km of cable and with 175,000 soldering points. It became operational on April 28, 1950 and was taken offline on September 22, 1954.

The engineers on the team led by Conny Palm were Harry Freese, Gösta Neovius, Olle Karlqvist, Carl-Erik Fröberg, G. Kellberg, Björn Lind, Arne Lindberger, P. Petersson and M. Wallmark.

Howard Aiken stated in reference to BARK "This is the first computer I have seen outside Harvard that actually works."

BARK was developed by Matematikmaskinnämnen a few years before BESK.