65 Years Ago, Manchester's 'Baby' Ran Electronically Stored Program 103
hypnosec writes that the first ever practical implementation of the stored program concept took place 65 years ago, "as the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine aka 'Baby' became the world's first computer to run an electronically stored program on June 21, 1948. The 'Baby' was developed by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill at the University of Manchester. 'Baby' served as a testbed for the experimental Williams-Kilburn tube – a cathode ray tube that was used to store binary digits, aka bits. The reason this became a milestone in computing history was that up until 'Baby' ran the first electronically stored program, there was no means of storing and accessing this information in a cost-effective and flexible way."
Re:How (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Opportunity missed (Score:5, Informative)
Computing in the UK really had a head start on the US in many ways, but in usual form it was underfunded and lacked vision; in many ways it suffered from the 50's post-war glow that "Britain Will Always Be Great". Once the Americans got in on the act they of course wiped the floor with everyone, and then socialist government meddling in the 60's just about finished off any hope of the UK compan[y|ies] being able to fight back.
Re:How (Score:5, Informative)
it lays to rest the myth that Americans invented the computer
It does, but it's been many years since the "ENIAC was the first electronic computer" myth was prevalent anyway.
The post is right that Baby was tremendously important for being the first computer with an electronically stored program. However if you want to debate who invented the modern computer, it's absurd to say that any one person or group did so. Histories are right to trace it back at least as far as Babbage. In the 1930's and 1940's there were numerous people and groups in the UK, US and even Germany (Zuse) that all made important contributions.
Re:Opportunity missed (Score:4, Informative)
Leo was developed by Lyons, a food manufacturer/wholesaler/retailer. There's a very nice book about about it, A Computer called Leo [amazon.co.uk].
Re:Opportunity missed (Score:4, Informative)
Computing in the UK really had a head start on the US in many ways, but in usual form it was underfunded and lacked vision;
There was a considerable amount of important computer work done in the UK in the early years. For example, when considering Manchester's contributions one shouldn't overlook the pioneering work done with Atlas [wikipedia.org]. But there is far more than that. In some cases you can trace the path of key developments we rely upon today, or that that probably most people have at least heard of, to things developed in Britain through some familiar names.
A notable example is the computer language, "BCPL [wikipedia.org]", developed by Dr. Martin Richards [cam.ac.uk] at Cambridge in 1966. Dennis Ritchie ported BCPL to Multics. Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie used BCPL on Multics and from it derived the language "B" [wikipedia.org]. Some early Unix utilities were written in the BCPL derivative B. After additional rework of B, it became C, the heart of the Unix system. And of course C has led to the widely used derivatives C++ and Objective C.
BCPL was also used by Dr. Richards to develop the portable Tripos [wikipedia.org] operating system, which was used on a variety of minicomputers. As microprocessors become ever more powerful and started forming the basis for powerful personal comptuers, Tripos was eventually selected to became the heart of the Amiga's AmigaDOS [wikipedia.org] operating system.
BCPL has been available on many systems with familiar names, including (reportedly) the Raspberry Pi.
Classic BCPL [nordier.com]
To anyone interested in the whys and wherefores of C, a passing acquaintance with BCPL is worthwhile. Viewed forwards through BCPL, rather than backwards through Java and C++, many C constructs, and idiomatic C ways of doing things, just make a lot more sense.
Beyond its historical importance, BCPL had intrinsic merits. In retrospect, what particularly impresses, is the elegant simplicity of its compiler. This is well documented in the book BCPL: the language and its compiler by Martin Richards and Colin Whitby-Stevens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). -- more [nordier.com]
BCPL: A tool for compiler writing and system programming [computer.org]
THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE B [bell-labs.com]
The Development of the C Language [bell-labs.com]