Path: csiph.com!feeder.erje.net!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!border1.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!buffer2.nntp.ams1.giganews.com!nntp.brightview.co.uk!news.brightview.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:27:02 -0500 From: Gareth Owen Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education References: <87lh0g2ugd.fsf@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2016 06:27:01 +0100 Message-ID: <87wpjz68re.fsf@gmail.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:uaQMq4lVdrih/2hBbxS3U+1hgDU= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 22 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-3uJl5Zzc2/ZjSxEbKk59ASA6jSh+VbVGwroJPrvG7ZsZKftP6h0TPUtpjYtwGAlP3cRJm13dYbCunZN!186VoceUtXXKCMBksYAhKv2rNsrsTsnUvQMM0sfFNsncpNVToWz6BjOTJfzU/Nf5x5w= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 2106 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:91558 Tim Rentsch writes: > Gareth Owen writes: Do you think the computers > developed at UPenn and IAS did not include a stored program > functionality? Paper tape and punch cards are not a "stored program" as the term is commonly used in computing history. You may choose to consider them to be so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored-program_computer "A stored-program computer is one that stores program instructions in electronic memory" ... "The University of Manchester's Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) is generally recognized as world's first electronic computer that ran a stored program—an event that occurred on 21 June 1948. However the SSEM ... more a proof of concept predecessor to the Manchester Mark 1 computer, which was first put to research work in April 1949." You may choose other definitions to fit your preferred answers. Whatever.