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'Modern' Computers Turn 60 Years Old

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the happy-birthday-baby dept.

Christian Smith writes "Stored program computers are 60 years old on Saturday. The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or 'Baby,' first ran on the 21st of June, 1948, in Manchester. While not the first computer, nor even programmable computer, it was the first that stored its program in its own memory. Luckily, transistors shrank the one tonne required for this computing power to something more manageable."

12 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. That Depends by FurtiveGlancer · · Score: 3, Informative

    US or European? Saftey equipment varies and so do curb weights.

    --
    Invenio via vel creo
    1. Re:That Depends by _merlin · · Score: 2, Informative

      Tonne= UK Ton= US

      No it isn't. A tonne is 1,000kg everywhere. A ton is 2,240lb in the UK and 2,000lb in the US. I can't believe you'd post something as uninformed as that while logged in.

  2. Re:A tonne? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    1.21 Old, 0.74 New.

  3. Zuse did it first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Not to nitpick but...What about the machines built by Zuse?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

    1. Re:Zuse did it first by jeiler · · Score: 3, Informative

      Zuse's machine didn't have memory, which is part of how they're defining "modern computer."

      --

      If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.

      Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

    2. Re:Zuse did it first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, according to wilkipedia it had memory

      "Improving on the basic Z2 machine, he built the Z3 in 1941. It was a binary 64-bit floating point calculator featuring programmability with loops but without conditional jumps, with memory and a calculation unit based on telephone relays. The telephone relays used in his machines were largely collected from discarded stock."

    3. Re:Zuse did it first by xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D · · Score: 3, Informative

      More specifically, it didn't store software in memory.

    4. Re:Zuse did it first by jeiler · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Z3 has a register (the "memory" cited in Wikipedia), but does not have memory for storing a program. (They're using the Von Neuman criteria for defining a computer.)

      --

      If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.

      Sacred cows make the best hamburger.

    5. Re:Zuse did it first by somethinsfishy · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Baby is set apart from other early machines by two major features.

      Memory was what we would call dynamic RAM. The storage element was special CRT's called Williams tubes which were the first all-electronic memory device (flip-flops we not economically viable for storing data). Williams tubes were randomly accessible and, used charges to store bits, and were therefore volatile. The volatile characteristic means that bits had to be refreshed by reading, or they would evaporate due to charge leakage. This is the same reason modern RAM chips have a periodic refresh cycle. This isn't a functional parallel, just a historically interesting one. FWIW, mercury delay lines are volatile, too, but not because of charge leakage. Programs were read into RAM from which they were executed.

      The other feature of the Baby which was adopted into subsequent designs was conditional jumps - sort of like goto's. The relative jump is a jump to a calculated address. Without the ability to hop around the program space based on whether statements are evaluated as true or false precludes easy implementation of things like for loops and arrays. In 1998, the Z3 was mathematically proved to be capable of conditional jumps, but this was not an intent in its design and didn't lead anywhere.

      The Baby had only seven instructions (take that, Microchip PIC!):

      Jump (indirect), Jump Relative (indirect), Load Negative, Store Accumulator, Subtract, Skip if Accumulator < 0, Halt

      A very good and hard to find page with info on the Mark I <URL:www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/mathcomp/bjsdir/madmmk1.shtml/>

  4. Re:Way to go by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Informative

    He meant the highest factor except for the number itself. Otherwise it doesn't matter what number you put in, the highest factor is always that number.

  5. 50th anniversary programming contest in '98 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:50th anniversary programming contest in '98 by tobyhoward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm Lead on the Digital60 celebrations at Manchester this year, and we ran a programming contest again for the 60th, using a Java sim: http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/Digital60/Baby/ssem/