[SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of the PHRASE

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

I have a query related to a project I am working on concerning the
conversion of ENIAC to stored program control in 1948, initially to run the
first computerized Monte Carlo calculations. All this took place prior to
the first operation of the Manchester Baby. That makes the question of what
one means by "stored program" a very interesting one.

This question was much discussed in the early days of the history of
computing (1970s, early 1980s). I am starting to dig back into primary
sources for early use of the phrases "stored program" and "stored program
concept" to get a better idea of how these terms were used in the
1940s/early 1950s and what people thought they meant at the time. 

To clarify, almost everyone who has written about this cites the 1945 "First
Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" as the initial dissemination of the stored
program concept although there has been considerable debate as to the source
of the ideas contained therein. However that document does not contain the
phase "stored program." Or indeed use the word "program" in the body of the
text. Or, remarkably, "EDVAC." "Stored" shows up a few times, though less
frequently than "remembered." So, ignoring for the moment the relationship
of the report to later definitions of the concept, we can agree that it was
not the source of the phrase. The most obvious summary of the idea using the
report's own terminology would be "remembered instruction device" rather
than "stored program computer." 

I had thought about the 1946 Moore School lectures as a possible vector for
the phase "stored program" as well as the concept. The phrase shows up many
times in the Moore School lectures book but so far I have spotted it only in
the 1980s editorial material rather than in the original lecture summaries. 

By 1954 "stored program computer" is showing up without explanation or
citation required in the description of the IBM 650 published in the
inaugural issue of Journal of the ACM. It is not particularly common in the
ACM DL material for the rest of the decade ("automatic computer" and
"digital computer" are more prevalent) but continues to pop up occasionally.
The best the OED can do is 1957, which is even later.

So, any thoughts on who came up with this phrase and when? I'm planning to
dig deeper in search of early usage, for example into the 1950 "High-Speed
Computing Devices" ERA book and some of the other CBI reprints from the
1940s, but it occurred to me that someone on the list might already know the
answer to the question.

Tom