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Call me old-fashioned, but I'm willing to pay more for a tube-based board made right here in the good ole' united Kingdom (SSEM)

No silicon-laden ARM crap for me.

Here's the link to the 3 different DOS based simulators for the SSEM or sometimes called the Manchester Mark 1

Here's a java simulation of the Eniac computer. Try writing a program to make it work!

Here's a java simulation of the Eniac computer. Try writing a program to make it work!

... the rebuilding of the rebuilding of the Mark 1: http://www.computer50.org/mark1/index.html

There's a simulator here if you want to do some old-school coding http://www.davidsharp.com/baby/ :)

Lots of links about it here.

They even had a contest for the best modern program that could run on the "Baby" Mark 1. The computer had 32 words of 32 bits each and had only 6 instructions stored in 3 bits: STOre, SUBtract, LoaDNegative, JuMP, Jump Relative/JRP, CoMPare/conditional branch, and SToP.

The contest winner was nothing more than a countdown timer. I'd guess that it won for out-of-the-box thinking in the presentation: The instructions were: Load program into memory. Pour hot water into pot noodles. Press start button. Wait for end-of-program light to light up. Enjoy noodles. Ignore output.

Indeed, the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (AKA SSEM or the 'Baby') was the predecessor to the Manchester Mark 1. There's a working replica of it at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. I entered a competition held to mark it's 50 anniversary in 1998 to create a programme for it (using a software emulator) -- as with a number of the other entries, I used the fact that it uses a CRT as storage, with the memory contents appearing as a grid of dots, to create a scrolling text message programme.

[Happosai]

Is this news or ignorance? Over ten years ago a physical version of the "first" computer, the Manchester Baby, was rebuilt. This simulation is interesting, but it isn't "news" compared to some other projects in the history of computing or even the simulation of the history of computing. See computer50.org for more about what happened at Manchester 60 years ago, the Computer History Museum computerhistory.org, for a general overview and some really impressive displays and reconstructionos, or even the Computer History Simulation Project http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ for a hint at how simulation can be done.

I also, long ago, used to believe that language features could improve software reliability. Nowadays the idea just makes me cackle

Why? Certain languages have features that eliminate large classes of errors. Whilst its possible that programmers will find other ways to screw up, I'd have though that reducing the set of errors that are actually possible would go some way to improving reliability.

Out of curiousity, what languages are you familiar with? Have you worked much in languages with very tough compile-time checks, like Haskell?

Y'know, I agree with the grandparent. On my first coding job there was a guy (Chris Burton) who'd worked on the Manchester Mark One. He was retirement age when I met him. We had a new model of inkjet printer, which had a new processor none of us had ever seen before. It printed characters, we needed it to print bitmaps.

Chris took the datasheet for the printer and the datasheet for the processor home on the train with him, and came back next morning with new code for the printer PROM written out - in opcodes, not assembler mnemonics - in longhand on a pad of paper. That code was blown into the PROM and worked first time, and continued to work without any errors reported for the three years I was on that project.

Programmers like that just don't seem to exist any more. Automatic memory allocation, bounds checking, type checking, etc. are great technology, and I wouldn't choose to live without them. But they mean we are all sloppy and careless, because we can get away with it, and when humans can, they do.

They had a programming contest 10 years ago. A pot-noodle timer won and was loaded on the rebuilt machine in a big celebration.

Read more:

Manchester Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the First Stored-Program Computer

The 1998 Programming Competition

Simulators so you can try your hand at programming a 60-year-old computer.

They had a programming contest 10 years ago. A pot-noodle timer won and was loaded on the rebuilt machine in a big celebration.

Read more:

Manchester Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the First Stored-Program Computer

The 1998 Programming Competition

Simulators so you can try your hand at programming a 60-year-old computer.

They had a programming contest 10 years ago. A pot-noodle timer won and was loaded on the rebuilt machine in a big celebration.

Read more:

Manchester Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the First Stored-Program Computer

The 1998 Programming Competition

Simulators so you can try your hand at programming a 60-year-old computer.

"Eh, Sorry Pinky, but here in America, where these computers were born, we put the month first, so today is 8/2/6!"

Why do Americans think they invented everything? The computer was thought up by Babbage in the 1800s, and the first computer with electronic memory was invented at Manchester uni in 1948 and was called "The Baby" - although you could probably claim any nation had the first working computer depending how you define a computer right back to the Chinese/Babylonians with the abacus.

One point is that ENIAC wasn't the ancester of modern computers, while the Manchester computers were.

ENIAC itself was missing essential features, such as useful amounts of electronic memory. That's crucial to having software programmability, without which a computing machine is not much more than just a calculator.

Modern computers are binary and software programmable - just like the 1948 Manchester Baby. ENIAC was base 10 and not software programmable, so it was a different sort of beast entirely. What it did show was that you could build a complex calculating machine using valves/tubes and have it work reliably.

It seems daft that the ENIAC creators didn't try to make more use of von Neumann since he seemed to be showing an interest - I've read that the ENIAC team weren't even aware of the engineering advantages of using binary, for example.

The Manchester computer people had access to Alan Turing and he was heavily involved. He even wrote the original programming manual http://www.computer50.org/kgill/mark1/mark1book.ht ml.

The Manchester Mark 1 was first at something - the first commercial Manchester Mark 1 was delivered before the first UNIVAC, so the Manchester Mark 1 counts as the world's first commercial computer. Something you won't read on most computer history sites...

The Manchester `Baby' was officially the `Small scale experimental computer', not the Mark 1. The Mark 1 was the second computer built at Manchester. It was based on the `Baby', but was a lot more sophisticated - the Mk 1 had a magnetic drum store, for example. Not file store, but for virtual memory. Yep, the first practical programmable electronic digital computer had something like virtual memory. More here: http://www.computer50.org/

You really don't learn, do you? I have rarely found someone so blind to the truth. Haven't you worked out that you are citing an American reference which is biased and plain wrong?

You could at least pick some real American inventions to argue over, like the Teddy Bear, ring do-nuts or Kool-Aid. But hey, let's look at your list yet again

The Computer - like most complex developments it is hard to claim that this is due to one person (or country). The 1939 ABC computer (though worked on till about 42) certainly exhibited parts of a modern system. So did the Konrad Zuse Z1 Computer, built earlier (in 1936) by a German. Generally, the first machine to exhibit all the aspects of a modern computer is considered to be the Manchester University Baby, of 1948, which is British. See the Wikki on the computer timeline, or look here - http://www.computer50.org/

Nuclear Power
"Nuclear reactor 1942 Enrico Fermi US" should read
"Nuclear reactor 1942 Enrico Fermi Italy". Fermi was Italian in 1942, and not a US citizen.

Air Travel - Heavier-than-air aircraft (and specifically air travel) were invented by Sir George Cayley. His paper 'On Aerial Navigation' was in 1809, and he made the first heavier-than-air flight in 1853. The Wright brothers were single-handedly responsible for stopping development of aircraft in the US (by patenting an impractical control system) to such an extent that when WW1 came the Americans had no aircraft, and were forced to buy French.

As for DC-3s being the first airliners - Ha!! Imperial Airways was set up in the UK in 1924. In 1927 it established the worlds first named air service - London-Paris (also Basle, Brussels and Cologne). By 1931 its routes included London to India, London to Central Africa and Cape Town, and London to Australia, as well as numerous connecting routes throughout the Empire. In 1938 it made the worlds first commercial crossing of the Atlantic. http://www.imperial-airways.com/History_page_1.htm l refers. They flew Handley-Page, Vickers, Armstrong-Whitworth and de Havilland aircraft - all British. In passing you might be interested to learn that the first non-stop transatlantic flight was made by Alcock and Brown in 1919 - I bet you thought it was Lindbergh in 1927?

The DC-3 was designed in 1935.

It seems unfair to go on like this - you obviously have no idea what you are talking about and are just relaying US-centric assertions that the US invented everthing. I presume this is what you have been taught - it is wrong. Stop digging yourself into a hole.

As a parting shot, have a look at this site on mobile phones - http://www.privateline.com/PCS/history4.htm . It points out that:

"Ships were the first wireless mobile platforms. In 1901 Marconi placed a radio aboard a Thornycroft steam powered truck, thus producing the first land based wireless mobile

From 1910 on it appears that Lars Magnus Ericsson (Sweedish) and his wife Hilda regularly worked the first car telephone. Yes, this was the man who founded Ericsson in 1876...."

Dude, ever heard of VM/370

or maybe Multics

or, more obscure but even earlier Atlas

If this computer had a bigger address space maybe we could port it? :)

... original virtual memory patent, was awarded about 1962 for a hardware implementation by a British computer company whose name escapes me.

They also missed out Autocode, which was a little higher level than asembler and still predated FORTRAN.

I would guess that this was the part of Siemens that was once Ferranti, maker of the first commercially available computer.

As opposed to the weblog wo which the article is linked, which merely make glaring factual errors, such as:

This is a photograph of the Enigma cryptanalytic machine devised by Alan Turing

While ENIAC clearly progressed the technology, one can consider it merely a step between Bletchley Park's Colossus and The University of Manchester's "Baby", which is claimed to be the first device to have all the components that are now considered characteristic of a computer.

*ducks again*

CRTs have been used as memory devices on some of the earlierst computers, in the form of Williams-Kilburn Tubes

Baby was the first machine that had all the components now classically regarded as characteristic of the basic computer. And it was build in Manchester.

No, I think you will find it's one of the places where the industrial revolution started.

Indeed. And Manchester is where the worlds first true computer was built.

Colossus
Baby

I'm curious when they will make platters about 1 inch across and stack them on a shaft a few inches long and lay them flat in a drive case, instead of a few vertical slow platters, a whole bunch of horizontal fast small platters.

Drum storage with a difference. At 10,000 RPM or worse, those suckers would precess like crazy. Perhaps they could use paired contra-rotating shafts, good bearings and hope nobody used them for a mobile app. Or build them into Segways. (-:

At least, as far as a quick Google finds. There may be other systems that predate those. As for IBM PC compatables, Coherent 4.0 (1992), BSDi and 386BSD (1990?) and Linux (1991, usenet announcement) all ran on 80386s in 32 bit mode. I remember seeing other OSes in Dr. Dobbs that claimed to be 32 bit as well. SCO Xenix was not 32 bit in the earlier versions (despite what the other reply claims)... SCO Xenix (and Coherent and other *nixish OSes for the PC lineage) predate the 80386.

--
Evan

At least, as far as a quick Google finds. There may be other systems that predate those. As for IBM PC compatables, Coherent 4.0 (1992), BSDi and 386BSD (1990?) and Linux (1991, usenet announcement) all ran on 80386s in 32 bit mode. I remember seeing other OSes in Dr. Dobbs that claimed to be 32 bit as well. SCO Xenix was not 32 bit in the earlier versions (despite what the other reply claims)... SCO Xenix (and Coherent and other *nixish OSes for the PC lineage) predate the 80386.

--
Evan

It's a bit rich for this bloke to say that Europeans don't understand the Internet when they invented computers, TV and the World Wide Web (SSEM, HREF="http://www.tvdawn.com/tvhist1.htm#Baird">Bai rd and Berners-Lee , all brits)!

So what's new?

Alan Turing designed the random number generator instruction for the Ferranti Mark 1 around 1950.

(Or is this an entry for the oldest Slashdot reposting competition, just 53 years late?)

So what's new?

Alan Turing designed the random number generator instruction for the Ferranti Mark 1 around 1950.

(Or is this an entry for the oldest Slashdot reposting competition, just 53 years late?)

Not to mention the fact that Americans INVENTED THE COMPUTER

Oh? When was this?

Here. oh yes, and Turing drank here, make a pilgrimage now.

If you accept this as "still working" and "in real use", then I think you'll be hard pushed to beat the Baby!

As for the first electronic digital computer, that wasn't ENIAC, either. I know you USAns like to think that you invented everything, but Colossus here in the UK beat you by a few years.

The first binary electronic digital computer was German: Konrad Zuse's Z1.

And ENIAC wasn't even the first stored-program electronic computer: while ENIAC had to be programmed by plugboard, the Manchester Mark 1, aka `Baby', was storing programs in memory along with data, just as all current machines do.

Credit where it's due, please :)

You can find simulators for "The Baby" (which was the first "real" computer and an ancestor of LEO) at www.computer50.org

Baby, probably the first programmable computer, designed and built at the university of manchester and first run on June 21st 1948. Has been recently rebuilt for it's 50th anniversary.

SInce then after passing through PDP 11s (some of these had some lovely 'paddle' switches to toggle stuff in) to VAXes I became more and more deprived of this original stimulus to enjoy computing, heck, even the LAN switches are losing their lights now!!!!!

Ok, on my high end servers I can enter console routines and fiddle with the CPU examing and depositing to registers and memory (even dissassembling code), but that isn't so much fun.

Back on topic, yes, there is a place for a low profuleand quiet box in my living room, but I don't like dead server rooms. If I have a room of computers doing things, I too like to have a feel of what they are doing.

What you have to realise is at the time, my Dad and other people working on the LEOs genuinely believed that these were the world's first computers ever, not just the world's first business computers as they later became known.

Your Dad mustn't have hung around the University of Manchester, then; they had a stored program computer running in 1948, but the leo-computers.org.uk site says that, although the directors of Lyons "decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers" in October 1947, the LEO wasn't operational until 1951. Were the Manchester SSEM or Mark I military secrets?

It was then made into the first commercially-available general-purpose computer ever in February 1951, called Ferranti Mk. 1

So the UNIVAC isn't the first computer in any aspect at all. Figures.

I remember the Baby's 50th anniversary, and goign to school in Manchester, barely 5 miles from the spot it was created, we had a little competition in the school (part of a larger competition - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/prog98/)

The SSEM - "baby" - http://www.computer50.org/
First run on June 21st 1948 - 3 years before univac. Less then a year later it was available to the university for general comutation, and had a magnetic "drum".

More information at that url anyway, and at http://www.google.com/search?q=manchester+baby

Bureau of the Census dedicated the world's first electronic general purpose data processing computer, UNIVAC I, on June 14, 1951. Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation

What about all the other computers that were made before then? True, Turing's computer wasn't technically 'general purpose' but what about the Baby? That first worked nearly 3 years before. But then, this isn't the first time a certain large-country-between-the-Pacific-and-the-Atlantic claimed inventing something first when it didn't (lightbulb, plane, car etc. etc.)

There's also the University of Manchester Department of Computer Science history and "50 years of computing at Manchester."

Or the Alan Turing Home Page.

Alan Turing used to drink at the Salisbury Arms, on Oxford Road in Manchester, which although serving a decent pint, is now way too packed in the evenings to be able to think in base 32 anymore.

The University of Manchester (where I am a student) claim to have invented the first "stored program computer". The SSEM (known as the "Baby" to it's friends) was invented in 1948 and used a CRT screen as memory.

More info at The Manchester Baby site.

Well, seeing as everybody is having problems defining the first OS, perhaps we should look at the first stored-program computer and see what that was running. The first "programmable logic calculator" and there were 10 of them in operation at Bletchley Park during WWII working on breaking the German Enigma cipher.

The "OS" on Colussus as I understand it, was simply the function of a group of valves. There was hardware checking other hardware, but to my knowledge there was no software running on Colussus other than the algorithm used to break Enigma. Input was by way of punched paper tape containing cipher read a few thousand characters a second (I've seen the rebuild running, and yes it is scary watching paper tape at that speed), output was buffered onto relays which meant a typewrite was printing out onto paper roll. The "processor" was just 5 characters of 5 bits held in a shit register. I suspect the "OS" was hardware and people making sure that none of the 2,500 valves blew up. All programming was by way of hard wiring, so it's hard to determine what the OS was here. There is some really cool information about Colussus here if you're interested.

Next there was ENIAC, which due to the fact the British Government kept Colussus an Official Secret, was considered for a long time to be the first ever computer. ENIAC seemed suprisingly similar (when I read the specs anyway) in terms of internal function to Colussus - no OS there at all. So, we still haven't found anything...

Then there was the Baby built by Manchester University in the UK. The rebuild of the Baby now sits in the Manhester Science and Industry museum. It's a curious piece of kit to say the least. It's memory consisted of a radar screen showing an array of bits, and whether each bit was on or not was picked up by a piece of gauze in front od the screen. Because phosphor on the screen takes a while to fade, you could just fire it, and not worry for a few hundred milliseconds about refreshing it.

The baby didn't require anything to hard wired at all. There was a group of toggle switches on the front to program the machine, and there was a sense of "state" when no program was loaded or running. Therefore, I think whatever it was running on the Baby probably has claim to being the first ever OS. There is some nice stuff on the Baby (or officially the Manchester Mark 1) over here for you to peruse at your pleasure.

So, my vote is that whatever was running on the Baby was the first OS. But then, I don't know as much about ENIAC as I do about Colussus and the Mark 1. Please feel free to correct me if the ENIAC had code running before a program was loaded.

Funny about how the history of computing is taught along national lines: I always learnt (I'm British) that the first general purpose computer (the Small Scale Experimental Machine, or SSEM) was built in Manchester, UK, in 1948, and german friends of mine learnt about the Z3 in school. Actually the SSEM was the first machine to store programs in memory: debatably a key component of the general purpose computer. I guess what counts as the first general purpose computer depends upon what you consider a machine needs to count as general purpose. Anyway you can read about the SSEM at Computer 50 .