Computing
Tom Kilburn
Engineer who built the first stored-program computer
Born 1921 · Died 2001
Photo: Parrot of Doom · CC BY-SA 3.0
«The most exciting time was June 1948 when the first machine worked. Without question. Nothing could ever compare with that.»
Tom Kilburn wrote and ran the first program ever stored in a computer's own memory, on 21 June 1948, on a machine known as the Manchester Baby. Every computer since works on the same principle.
Key achievements
- Ran the first stored-program computer on 21 June 1948
- Founded Britain's first computer science department
- Led the Atlas, the world's fastest computer in 1962
Universities
Manchester
Built the Manchester Baby in 1948 and founded the university's computer science department, the first in Britain.
Cambridge, England
Read mathematics at Sidney Sussex College before wartime work on radar.
Facts
- The first program found the highest factor of a number and took 52 minutes to run.
- Alan Turing joined the Manchester team shortly afterwards and wrote the programming manual for the machine.
- He led the design of five generations of computers at Manchester over thirty years, including the Atlas, the fastest in the world in 1962.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.