From all of us who use computers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7465115.stm
Its 60 years ago since the baby was born!
Quote:
Sixty years ago the "modern computer" was born in a lab in Manchester.
The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or "Baby", was the first to contain memory which could store a program.
The room-sized computer's ability to carry out different tasks - without having to be rebuilt - has led some to describe it as the "first modern PC".
Using just 128 bytes of memory, it successfully ran its first set of instructions - to determine the highest factor of a number - on 21 June 1948.
|
And just to clear some points
Quote:
Baby was the successor to machines such as the American ENIAC and the UK's Colossus.
ENIAC was built to calculate the trajectory of shells for the US army, whilst Colossus was used to decrypt messages from the German High Command during World War II.
Both computers were able to be reprogrammed but this could involve days of rewiring. Baby was designed to overcome this limitation.
"It was the earliest machine that was a computer, in the sense of what everyone today understands a computer to be," explained Chris Burton of the Computer Conservation Society (CCS).
"It was a single piece of hardware which could perform any application depending on what program you put in."
The key to this ability was its memory, built from a cathode ray tube (CRT), which could be used to store a program.
|
A computer is a device to store re-programable software.
Happy Birthday
06-20-2008, 09:51 AM
Happy 60th Birthday
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
