A Sixty Year Old Baby; Computer That Is!
June 20th, 2008 Posted in News
In a small lab in Manchester sixty years ago, an invention was built that would revolutionise the world and do much to shape modern society. The first ever true computer affectionately named ‘Baby’ was the first computer with the ability to store memory. The name ‘Baby’ can be considered slightly ironic considering that the computer took up an entire room. It was a watershed in computer design however, being the first to be able to carry out a variety of tasks without having to be rebuilt in different configurations.
It was on the 21st of June in 1948 that the computer completed its first successful task using what we would consider today to be a paltry 128 bytes of memory. The original team that worked on the project are being honoured in a special ceremony this weekend to commemorate their seminal work; on being interviewed one of the team members, Geoff Tootill reminisced about the excitement they felt at the completion of this inaugural task.
While many see the UK’s ‘Colossus’ as the first computer it required much manual work to adapt it to different tasks. In resemblance to the modern computer, ‘Baby’ is a far better comparison than the ‘Colossus’ machine. It was the creation of computer memory that can be seen as the major development; without it, the adaptation and performance of the ‘Baby’ computer would not have been possible. It is amazing how far we have come since, the 1024 bits that gave the computer its 128 bytes is easily eclipsed by modern 1GB chips that have approximately 8 million bits.
While the difference between the modern computer and ‘Baby’ may be great, it is still possible to trace a direct lineage between the two, making ‘Baby’ easily the forefather of a device that the modern world could not live without.
You must be logged in to post a comment.