When and where was the first truly modern computer built and run? Would it surprise you if I said in 1948 in Manchester in the UK, a city better known for its role in the industrial revolution?

After developing the Colossus computer for code breaking at Bletchley Park during World War II, Max Newman was committed to the development of a computer incorporating both Alan Turing’s mathematical concepts and the stored-program concept that had been described by John von Neumann.

Newman’s team built the ‘Small Scale Experimental Machine’ – better known now as the ‘Manchester Baby’.

Manchester Baby ran its first program on 21 June 1948:

It was designed to find the highest proper factor of 2¹⁸ (262,144) by trying every integer from 2¹⁸ − 1 downwards. The divisions were implemented by repeated subtractions of the divisor. The Baby took 3.5 million operations and 52 minutes to produce the answer (131,072). The program used eight words [32-bit] of working storage in addition to its 17 words of instructions, giving a program size of 25 words.

Learn more in thee article here.