Hans B Pufal wrote:
>
> Derek Peschel wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 01:25:29PM +0100, Stan Barr wrote:
>
> >>Don't know about PDP-8 programs, but a copy of a program
> >>to print squares, by M.V.Wilkes, May 1949 is available
> >>for the EDSAC emulator...could this be the oldest surviving
> >>computer program? (Of course, the operating sustem - or
> >>Initial Orders as it was known - is older.)
>
> > I thought the squares program was lost and had to be reconstructed.
>
> You may be thinking of the first program run at Manchester in 1948,
> although a notebook survives with a listing of that program it is dated
> some weeks later. The original authors of the program reconstructed it
> from that listing and their recollections. This was done for the 50th
> anniversary celebrations in 1998. More details for the curious at
> http://www.computer50.org/
>
> Since the manchester machine is considered (by some) to be the first
> electronic stored program digital computer, then the first program to
> run on it must, by definition, be the oldest - no?
>
I think there was a few algorithmic notes , almost a program for
babbage's mill.
Since one has a Babbage emulator (
http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/contents.html )
and some hardware built in the 1990's is the mill the first or last?
historical computer built?
--
Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu *
www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html
Received on Sat Apr 06 2002 - 11:13:32 BST