Cabinet No.0, for Elliott/NRDC 401 Computer MkI, c.1953

This computer was used for eleven years at the Rothamsted Agricultural Institute for everything from analysis of crop trials and insect damage to work in the mathematics of genetics. It was brought there by Frank Yates, a wartime operational researcher who established Rothamsted as a peacetime statistical computing centre.

Yates had previously worked under the eminent statistician, Ronald Fisher, who laid the foundation for much of modern statistical research, including randomisation, crucial in clinical as well as agricultural trials today. Yates himself tirelessly encouraged the use of statistical analysis in government research.