24 May
2001
24 May
'01
10:56 p.m.
On Fri, 25 May 2001 08:41:43 +0200 (CEST)
jkunz(a)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(a)uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England