On Fri, 25 May 2001 08:41:43 +0200 (CEST)
jkunz_at_unixag-kl.fh-kl.de wrote:
> On 24 May, Iggy Drougge wrote:
> > I agree, but what about the Baby machine at Manhcester?
> Baby machine? Do you mean the machines of Charles Babbage?
No, the "Baby" was built in 1948 at Manchester University
to test their Williams memory. It was a 32-bit
serial machine with about six instructions. It was the
first fully electronic, stored-program machine.
As far as I'm concerned, if it ran the first stored
program, then it's the first computer! Machines like Eniac
weren't stored-program and we'd call them "calculators"
nowadays.
If anyone's interested, there's a couple of good books on
this era by Simon Lavington. One's about early British
computers, while the other covers just the Manchester
machines. I also have a simulator for the "Baby", written
in C, somewhere.
--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball_at_uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England
Received on Fri May 25 2001 - 05:56:26 BST