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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."

2 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. A tonne? by Majik+Sheff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's that in Volkswagen Beetles?

    --
    Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
  2. Re:Evolution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Lame.