[SIGCIS-Members] "Stored Program" -- origins in IBM circa 1949?

Tue Apr 3 21:58:10 PDT 2012

Tom,
 	With the help of Google scholar I think I found a 1951 (Google 
sholar can sometimes introduce some anachronistic results, I can't check 
since I don't have easy journal access) that was actually published. The 
paper is:

The IBM card-programmed electronic calculator Authors: 	John W. Sheldon 
International Business Machines Corporation, New York, N.Y. Liston Tatum 
International Business Machines Corporation, New York, N.Y.
Published in:· Proceeding AIEE-IRE '51 Papers and discussions presented at 
the Dec. 10-12, 1951, joint AIEE-IRE computer conference: Review of 
electronic digital computers 
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1434775
According to the google search the sentences around the term read:
"Thus a stored program machine often has to keep reassuring itself as it 
goes along; that is, it has to keep asking itself questions. For ex- 
ample, in a direct matrix inversion the stored program machine has to keep 
asking itself such questions as: "Am I at the end of 
the row?""

Google scholar also found the 1949 IBM document by Mussell 
and Frizell by way of a citation in a 1972 MIT Master's Thesis on 
Microprogramming by BH Yee (
http://18.7.29.232/bitstream/handle/1721.1/61073/24292775.pdf?sequence=1 ) 
suggesting the internal document received some circulation over the years.

So 1951 is the first official publication of the phrase I've found and it 
is also by IBMers again suggesting their origination of the phrase. Also, 
while Google scholar finds the 1951 paper. It finds only one reference in 
1952 by Charles Adams an MIT/Whirlwind man ( 
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=609784.609795 ), however in 1953 there 
are about 6 usages of the phrase that google finds (mostly by IBMers and 
including the one that David Grier pointed out). Appropriately one of 
those is a history/review of the development of the IAS computer project 
by William Ware that contains at once an early usage of the term stored 
program machine and a quick discussion of the origins of the concept 
behind the term in the ENIAC project (see page 5 
http://192.5.14.43/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2010/P377.pdf ).

So it seems like at this point 1953 was a breakout point in terms of 
published use of the term, but all this makes me think the term already 
had wider currency before then (presumably due to circulation of the term 
at conferences and in the various computer projects and sales going on).

-- 

Yours Truly,
Allan Olley, PhD

http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, Thomas Haigh wrote:

> 
> Thanks to Peggy Kidwell (below) we have a confirmed sighting of “stored
> program” in the wild in 1949. In fact two, in internal IBM documents. This
> is very suggestive when taken in conjunction with something I noticed in
> searching the ACM DL yesterday, which is that 6 of the 11 uses it located
> through the end of 1960 were in papers written by IBM staff.
>
> 
> 
> So, an attractive hypothesis is that the term was coined within IBM
> Poughkeepsie in 1949 during early work on IBM’s first experimental stored
> program computer, the Test Assembly. As the 604 calculator being
> cannibalized for its electronic arithmetic unit already had a plugboard
> programming mechanism it makes sense that the team would want a clear name
> for the separate capability they were building to execute a program stored
> in Williams Tubes backed by a drum.
>
> 
> 
> Tom
>
> 
> 
> From: Kidwell, Peggy [mailto:kidwellp at si.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 11:43 AM
> To: 'David Alan Grier'; Thomas Haigh
> Subject: RE: [SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of
> the PHRASE
>
> 
> 
> The term “stored program” was used in internal IBM documents discussing
> the development of special circuits for the IBM 604 electronic calculating
> punch by 1949.  See, for example, Nathaniel Rochester, “Plans for the Data
> Processing Test Assembly,” Document 05.14.24.  See also H. A. Mussell & C.
> E. Frizzell, “Stored Program,” December 27, 1949, which refers to
> Rochester’s paper.  This had internal code 05.015.37.
>
> 
> 
> The reference is to programs stored on the drum of the machine or
> electrostatically, as opposed to on a plugboard. 
>
> 
> 
> Peggy
> 
> From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
> Behalf Of David Alan Grier
> Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 5:25 PM
> To: Thomas Haigh
> Cc: members at sigcis.org
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of
> the PHRASE
>
> 
>
> 
> 
> Tom
>
>             Two bounds for your search.  "Stored Program" is not in the
> 1950 IRE Standard on Computer Terms:
>
> 
>
> 
>
>   Standards on Electronic Computers: Definitions ofTerms, 1950
> 
> Proceedings of the IRE 
> Volume: 39 , Issue: 3
> Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JRPROC.1951.231840 
> Publication Year: 1951 , Page(s): 271 - 277
>
> 
>
> 
> 
> But it is used in the 1953 IRE article on programming. 
>
> 
>
>   Fundamentals of Digital Computer Programming
> 
> Thomas, W.H.
> Proceedings of the IRE 
> Volume: 41 , Issue: 10
> Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JRPROC.1953.274275 
> Publication Year: 1953 , Page(s): 1245 - 1249
>
> 
>
>  I SHOULD NOTE THAT IT IS NOT USED IN THE COMPANION 1953 article on the
> IBM 701.
>
> 
> 
> David
>
> 
>
> 
> 
> --------------------------------
> 
> David Alan Grier
> 
> Fellow, IEEE
> 
> President Elect, IEEE Computer Society 
> 
> Assoc. Prof., International Science & Technology Policy
> 
> Center for International Science and Technology Policy 
> 
> grier at gwu.edu
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
> 
> On Apr 2, 2012, at 4:34 PM, Thomas Haigh wrote:
>
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list
> of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at
> http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription
> options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
>
> 
> 
> 
>