Modern Baby: A pioneering computer from Manchester

Finally, when we pressed the start button it set off on this usual dance of death and then suddenly it stopped and there in the expected line was the expected answer. So we'd built a computing machine. When and where was the first truly modern computer built and run? Would it surprise you if I said in 1948 in Manchester in the UK, a city better known for its role in the industrial revolution? After John von Neumann’s paper First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC was circulated by Herman Goldstine, a number of copies made their way across the Atlantic and into the hands of some of the engineers who had worked on the development of the Colossus code-braking computer. After developing the Colossus computer for code breaking at Bletchley Park during World War II, Max Newman was committed to the development of a computer incorporating both Alan Turing's mathematical concepts and the stored-program concept that had been described by John von Neumann. In 1945, he was appointed to the Fielden ... Read full article.