1948 – Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine Runs First Program
What was first expected to be a practical use computer, the SSEM, or Small-Scale Experiment Machine became the first stored program computer. Basically, it stores program instructions into it’s electronic memory. The 32-bit word length, cathode-ray tube computer was designed to only run subtraction and negation through hardware. Other function could be run, but only through software.
The first program was run on this day. It was written by Professor Tom Kilbum. The seventeen-instruction stored-program took 52 minutes to run. The program was tasked to find the highest proper factor of 2Ù18(262,144).
1981 – IBM Retires Last “STRETCH” Supercomputer
IBM retires its last “STRETCH” mainframe, part of the 7000 series that represented the company’s first transistorized computers. At the top of the line of computers – all of which emerged significantly faster and more dependable than vacuum tube machine – sat the 7030, or STRETCH. Seven of the computers, which featured a 64 -bit word architecture and other innovations, were sold to national laboratories and other scientific users. L. R. Johnson first used the term “architecture” in describing the STRETCH.
2004 – SpaceShipOne – First Private Space Flight
Financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, SpaceShipOne becomes the first spacecraft developed by the free market to enter spaceflight. Launched from a mothership named White Knight, SpaceShipOne flew just beyond the atmosphere into the threshold of space then glided back to Earth. SpaceShipOne would later win the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft.
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