On Saturday, it will be exactly 60 years since the world's first stored-program, electronic, digital computer flickered into life in a laboratory at the University of Manchester.
The computer was immediately nicknamed 'Baby' — something of a misnomer, since it was an enormous device. Its size is illustrated by a picture of the device (below) that recently turned up in an old file at the university.
But the picture only shows one part of Baby, as university press officer Alex Waddington explained: "There was a full panoramic shot of Baby, which was made by photographing it bit by bit, and then fitting the pictures together in one long picture. I've checked all the material we published back then and also the clippings from the media, and I can't see the full panoramic shot anywhere, so it seems it was never released."
Crucially, the picture does not show the output device. The output was, in fact, "read directly from the face of a CRT [cathode ray tube]", Waddington said.The Small-Scale Experimental Machine, as Baby was officially named, successfully executed its first program on 21 June, 1948.
By today's standards, Baby was an extremely primitive machine. In modern terms, the prototype Baby had a random access memory (RAM) of just 32 locations or 'words'. Each word in the RAM consisted of 32 bits (binary digits) and a total of 1,024 bits of memory. According to Waddington, the computing speed was 1.2 milliseconds per instruction, equivalent to a clock speed of slightly under 1kHz, more than two million times slower than a typical desktop processor today.
Waddington pointed out that an 80GB Apple iPod "is capable of storing 640 million times more information than the original Baby".
Baby was built using metal racks from the Post Office along with hundreds of valves, and the keyboard was a series of push buttons and switches, mounted vertically.
All this year, the University of Manchester will be hosting a series of events to celebrate the birthday of Baby and the work of its inventors, Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams.
Talkback
Did we really invent the digital computer?? Gosh.
I don't recall we are allowed to have invented or won anything since the flag fell on th4e Empire and The US took all our money, it was always done for us by the nice Americans per movie history.
Next we'll be claiming we inventend the Jet engine, discovered penicillin, unravelled DNA, defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and Trafalgar and won the Battle of Britain (all Americans!) .......... created the basis of electrically driven economies even . As an American publication surely you should check your facts and change them as appropriate? ;-)
I now await the Hollywood movie where Tom Cruise and Jeff Goldbloom invent the first Digital stored program electronic computer in Manchester , NH, US of A and use it to kick Commie butt. Hoorah!
Brian
PS Changed double triode J-K flip flop valves in ACE at NPL and remember the arrival of Deuce - the solid state replacement, also EMI's solid state computer of the 60s which led us to the Brain and Body scanner invention from EMI's Central Research Labs. Yup we did stuff, but our boardroom buffer public schoolboys were total tossers - chaps were incompetent at mass production, logistics, marketing and support, only sold to the colonies who had no choice thanks to restrictive trade practices. Empire was our time....and our downfall. But we got a leg up to developed status. Have to stop living off its' infrastructure soon.............
Of course it's right!
I like your take on history Brian. Have you ever seen an old movie called The Strike, from Peter Richardson et all famed of The Comic Strips Presents.
From the <A href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0544893">IMDB</A>: "A British screen-writer (Sayle) sells his adaptation rights to the American movie industry, the script is about the miners strike in 1984. The Hollywood hypocrites want the miners to win the strike, and so they hire the writer to re-write the ending with Al-Pacino playing the main role as the union leader."
I suspect you'd enjoy that movie. And check our profiles - we're all based in London (even if our overlords are across the Atlantic)!
Sorry don't know the movie but will now look for it.
Sorry I am bored with everything that must be done....
How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb?
Overlords sounds like DarkLords only different - the "Bane" of our lives.
How appropriate! Overlord was "organised" - take a lot of soldiers and throw them at beaches until the Germans run out of bullets or get overrun - by all American Ike in very British Bushy Park next to NPL/Hampton Court. They created a SHAEF Gate and there are still USAAF and Eisenhower Memorials.
D-Day casualties were LOWER than planned ......
Bushy Park still contained this US Military base until the mid 60s, now all you can see is a 30 foot circular plinth and flag in a remote corner of the park. Its on the Bushy Park map.
Anyway, the American's pillaged with a culturally correct approach for the 20th Century - which left us with two less tower blocks and global terror as the exploited got pissed off and also enabled by the system that oppressed them (we never did that, just sent a gunboat, hung the ring leader with "pour encouragee les autres" label round his neck) and made another local the top guy, with 50 or so warships in total and some resilient civil servants, tea and gin and tonic and the Martin Henry rifle of course.).
As the Americans fade the Chinese will do the same pillaging under their "non-interventionist" approach in the 21st. They sure have the funding. Outside IT, as this is, is the story of the Black Hole of China, its just sucking in global liquidity by direct and back door methods like a black hole eats a star.
Don't you love people complaining about the expat Chinese living in their own private communes abroad - like the Roaman's in their Villas and Forts, Norman's in their Castles, Brits in their hill stations and Americans in their PXs and St John's Wood haven't done the same.
Hello!
We better get nuclear power before we can no longer afford fossil as 2 Billion people go up two decades of consumption of energy in 40 years and the city moves to Shanghai....
Nothing to do with boring old tech, sorry.