Thread View: alt.folklore.computers
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Started by n... Brian Randell
Fri, 07 Sep 1990 17:32
Re: computer museum
Author: n... Brian Randell
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 1990 17:32
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 1990 17:32
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Louis Howell asked: >Does anyone know what the first stored program computer was? I'm >sure we could simulate its machine language, or assembler if it >had one. Identifying historical "firsts" is always tricky, particularly if you do not specify exactly what qualifications you had in mind. However there is general agreement that the word's first "operational practical electronic stored program computer" was the Cambridge EDSAC (May 1949). Delete the word "practical" and the honour I suggest goes to Manchester, for their "baby machine" (April 1949), built primarily to test out the CRT memory device. (Another contender is the BINAC.) An excellent emulator for the EDSAC has been written for the MAC, by Martin Campbell-Kelly of the University of Warwick. This comes complete with a number of authentic early programs, and a very readable manual. Quite how this will be eventually distributed I am not sure, but people with a genuine interest in the simulator might email him directly (mck@uk.ac.warwick.cs). Brian Randell, Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK EMAIL = Brian....@newcastle.ac.uk PHONE = +44 91 222 7923 FAX = +44 91 222 8232
Re: computer museum
Author: cs4... saul rosen
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 1990 20:47
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 1990 20:47
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>>does anyone know what the first stored program computer was? I'm >>sure we could simulate its machine language, or assembler if it >>had one >there is general agreement that the word's first "operational >practical electronic stored program computer" was the Cambridge EDSAC >(May 1949) There is general agreement that the modern stored program computer was invented in 1944-45 at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. The computer was called the EDVAC and is described in considerable detail in "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" by John von Neumann, and in "Automatic High Speed Computing: A Progress Report on the EDVAC" by J.Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. Both of these documents were written in 1945. The EDVAC, when it was finally finished in 1952, was quite different from the machine described by its inventors in 1945. Maurice Wilkes attended a short course on computers at the Moore School in the summer of 1946 and the design of the EDSAC that he then built at Cambridge owed a great deal to the the earlier EDVAC design.
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