Computing · 1949

EDSAC

The first practical stored-program computer in regular service.

Maurice Wilkes's Cambridge machine used mercury delay lines for memory and ran its first program on 6 May 1949. It offered a computing service to researchers and pioneered subroutine libraries.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Stored-program architecture 1945

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Fastest computer in the world Latest: 2.2×10¹⁸ operations per second (2026) Source: Wikipedia: List of fastest computers; Wikipedia: History of supercomputing

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6