Birth of the Baby

On June 21st, 1948, at Manchester University, shortly after 11 o'clock in the morning, the world's first stored-program electronic digital computer successfully executed its first program. That program was written by Tom Kilburn who, along with Freddie Williams designed and built the machine. It was called the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, but was soon nicknamed "The Baby".

 
The Manchester Mark 1

The Baby

The world's first stored-program electronic digital computer.

The Manchester Mark 1

The Williams-Kilburn Tube

The Williams Tube provided computers with the first random access memory (RAM).

The MU5

Early Manchester Computers

The Baby was the first in a long line of pioneering developments in the field of computing at The University of Manchester.


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