Computer, 4th Edition

8 Software

DOI: 10.4324/9781003263272-12

THE CONSTRUCTION of the first practical stored-program computer, the Cambridge University EDSAC, has been widely – and justifiably – celebrated as a triumphal moment in the history of modern computing. But it was not long after the EDSAC became operational in May 1949 that the Cambridge team realized that the completion of the machine itself was only the first step in the larger process of developing a working computer system. In order to take advantage of the theoretical power of their new general-purpose computer, the EDSAC team first had to program it to solve real-world problems. And as Maurice Wilkes, the leader of Cambridge development, would shortly realize, developing such programs turned out ...