In the heart of Manchester, UK, a groundbreaking event took place in 1948: the first modern computer, known as the Manchester Baby, ran its very first program. The Baby’s ability to execute stored programs, developed with guidance from John von Neumann’s theory, marks it as a pioneer in the digital age. This fascinating chapter in computing history not only reshapes our understanding of technology’s roots but also highlights the incredible minds behind it. The original article, including a video transcript, sits here at [TheChipletter]’s.
So, what made this hack so special? The Manchester Baby, though a relatively simple prototype, was the first fully electronic computer to successfully run a program from memory. Built by a team with little formal experience in computing, the Baby featured a unique cathode-ray tube (CRT) as its memory store – a bold step towards modern computing. It didn’t just run numbers; it laid the foundation for all future machines that would use memory to store both data and instructions. Running a test to find the highest factor of a number, the Baby performed 3.5 million operations over 52 minutes. Impressive, by that time.
Despite criticisms that it was just a toy computer, the Baby’s significance shines through. It was more than just a prototype; it was proof of concept for the von Neumann architecture, showing us that computers could be more than complex calculators. While debates continue about whether it or the ENIAC should be considered the first true stored-program computer, the Baby’s role in the evolution of computing can’t be overlooked.
The 1998 rebuild included a world-wide programming contest, with the winner having the privilege of having his code run on the actual replica.
The winner won on pure style points: It was a simple count-down timer dressed up as a kitchen timer. The instructions were to get some dried soup and boiling water, pour the water into the dried soup, start the program, wait for the “done” light to display on the Baby, IGNORE THE OUTPUT OF THE PROGRAM, and enjoy your soup.
On a related note, “programming in the small” – with just 32 words of 32 bits each and a handful-and-a-half worth of instructions – can be an interesting challenge.
Morse code dits or dashes, that’s what it likes like. The origin of binary in a scan needed a visible zero.
Also interesting: Self-playing pianos and textiles manufacturing machines were early programmable devices that used forms of punch cards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
The Manchester Baby built on the legacy of Bletchley Park’s Colossus. Alan Turing and Max Newman were instrumental in the push to design and develop the Baby.
I wanted to understand how it work. So, naturally, I built an emulator!
https://em.ulat.es/machines/ManchesterBaby/
Ok, but the question is would we have PCs today if it wasn’t built? Otherwise it’s just a school project.
Somebody else would have made the first computer to run a program from memory, but this one happened to beat everyone else. Therefore it is significant. You’d have PCs by now without it (probably) but you wouldn’t have them if nobody did what these people did first
Surely. Just like there had been multiple inventors of the light bulb or the telephone, which all had a similar idea roughly same time.
It’s same with PDA or smartphone, for example.
The nowadays design of a smartphone is nothing special, it was just the most simple conclusion.
It looks similar to a pocket mirror or a small chalkboard.
I’ve been fascinated by Manchester Baby for a while and many years ago I put together a text based emulator written in Python. Added a primitive assembler to the emulator.
If you are interested the source is here: https://github.com/NevynUK/ManchesterBaby
Best post on HaD in a very long time!
I wrote a classic Mac emulator for the Manchester Baby when I was at Manchester University, back in 1998, i.e. when they were rebuilding the replica. It will run at full speed on a Mac Plus (it only needs to run at 700 IPS).
It’s more authentic than many emulators, because it copies the display the way it was actually shown (every digit was lit up, 1’s were just longer); the “Typewriter” was a set of buttons in a rectangular grid; the toggle switches behave like the real machine.
I’ve put a thread up at the 68KMLA as a demo.
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/macbaby-an-emulator-for-the-worlds-first-von-neumann-computer.49556/
Nice! I just finished restoring a Mac SE a couple weeks ago.
https://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/Archive/simulators/SSEM/
The wmadm.zip archive contains a Windows 3.1 emulator/simulator for the Baby Machine.
Should run on any ordinary 286/386 PC, I think.
(This article reminded me of my search for early emulators running on PC.)