The first modern computer which sparked digital age marks 60th anniversary

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The first modern computer which sparked digital age marks 60th anniversary


By Fiona Macrae
Last updated at 11:26 PM on 20th June 2008



It may look like a ramshackle collection of old parts.

But this one-tonne 'baby' is the mother of all modern computers.

Without it, we would not have personal computers, phones, iPods or the internet.

Nicknamed Baby, it whirred to life 60 years ago in a nondescript laboratory at Manchester University.

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Two scientists work with the world's first modern computer in 1948. It weighed one-ton and filled a whole room

More properly known as the Small Scale Experimental Machine, its components included metal Post Office racks, garden fence posts, Meccano pieces and Spitfire radios left over from the war.

Instead of a screen, information, in the form of glowing dots and dashes, was read directly off the face of a cathode ray tube.

Computers before Baby were little more than sophisticated calculating machines.

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Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams with their 'Baby' - the first computer with a memory

But Baby could be programmed to carry out dozens of different tasks and, more importantly, could alter its own programme.

At first, it failed in its task to solve a problem involving prime numbers.

But shortly after 11am on June 21st 1948 the display tube lit up with the right answer - and the computer was born.

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A general view of 'Baby' the world's first modern computer

Professor Freddie Williams, one of Baby's inventors, said later: 'A program was laboriously inserted and the start switch pressed.

'Immediately the spots on the display tube entered a mad dance.

'In early trials it was a dance of death leading to no useful result, and what was even worse, without yielding any clue as to what was wrong.

'But one day it stopped, and there, shining brightly in the expected place, was the expected answer. It was a moment to remember. 'This was in June 1948, and nothing was ever the same again.'

In 1951, Baby was dismantled to make way for bigger and better models. However, a working replica is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

Despite its short life, it played a pivotal role in the digital revolution, paving the way for home computers long before Microsoft's Bill Gates was even born.

Compared with today's computers, Baby was a dinosaur, with less computing power than a modern calculator.

Its memory was capable of storing just 1024 bits. The memory of the average home computer is around 1.5billion times bigger.

Relatively simple calculations could take almost an hour to perform and a tendency to overheat meant the laboratory's windows had to be open even on the coldest day.

Baby's inventors, Professor Williams and Dr Tom Kilburn, first worked together on the development of radar during World War Two.

Professor Williams died in 1977, Dr Kilburn in 2001.

Their achievement of 60 years ago was honoured at Manchester University.

The surviving members of the design and development team - Geoff Tootill, Dai Edwards and Alec Robinson and Tommy Thomas - were each awarded medals of honour from the university and from the British Computer Society.

Professor John Perkins, dean of the faculty of engineering and physical sciences, said: 'The university is extremely proud of what Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams achieved in 1948.

'The birth of the Baby changed the world forever and we hope the Digital 60 Day celebrations will raise the profile of computer science and encourage the brightest and best of the next generation to engage in the challenges facing computing over the coming decades.'


The first modern computer which sparked digital age marks 60th anniversary | Mail Online