...at least, the first machine to store both data and software in random
access memory and process it electronically (there are other definitions).
The Small Scale Experimental Machine ("Baby") first ran a program on 21
June 1948. It's computing speed was 1.2 milliseconds per instruction, and
it had 32 words of RAM! It's successor, the Manchester Mark 1, took a
further 18 months to emerge.
It was hardly a micro, but "Popular Mechanics" predicted: "computers in
the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons"
By 1951, Professor Douglas Hartree was expressing doubts about the
proliferation of the new machine: "We have a computer in Cambridge, one
in Manchester and one at the National Physical Laboratory; I suppose
there ought to be one in Scotland, but that's about all".
:-)X
(source: Computer Bulletin)
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