FWD: Manchester Baby Programming Competition

From: Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk <(Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk)>
Date: Mon Oct 20 17:47:53 1997

> > Program the world's first computer!
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >The world's first computer program was run on June 21st 1948 on the
> >"baby" Mark1 at Manchester. As part of the celebrations to mark the 50th
> >....
>
> Could some of the list members with more historical knowledge comment
> on this? I thought the first "electronic digital computer" was the ABC -
> Atanasoff Berry Computer from 1939. This was verified in some high
> powered patent cases in '73 and '74, that concluded Sperry-Univac could
> not claim patents for the ideas from thier Univac machine ("43 or '44?).
> Honneywell, CDC, IBM, and others did not want to pay royalties to Sperry.
> The Sperry machine is the first "commercial" machine that was offered for
> sale.

Are you _sure_ the ABC was electronic? I was under the impression that
the 1930s machines were all (almost all?) relay computers. Konrad Zuse
is the pioneer whose name is oft mentioned here...

As I see it, the sequence of events is as follows:

The 1940s saw the valve (vacuum tube) computers begin to emerge - in
some order (still in debate) ENIAC, Univac and the hush-hush British
project, Colossus (hush-hush because it was part of the war effort), all
appeared in 1943 I think. Colossus currently claims to have been first,
but it is hard to verify with all the wartime secrecy that surrounded
it.

The Manchester machine claims to be the first _stored program_ machine.
It was the first electronic computer, and I think also the first
computer, to hold its software in main memory. It was far too small for
this to be sensible - the purpose was to demonstrate the principal of it
with a view to using similar hardware and software designs on larger
machines in the future. All previous machines had a main store for
data, and a programming panel for patch leads etc. to hold instructions.

Soon after the Manchester machine ran, the EDSAC project in Cambridge
pulled ahead with a large scale stored program (Von Neumann) machine.
Professor Wilkes, who ran this project, said in one talk he gave that
they had wanted to include floating point in EDASC, since it was already
available on many relay computers, but this had to wait until a later
design...

Philip.
Received on Mon Oct 20 1997 - 17:47:53 BST