(Forwarded, as the list bounced his message.) From: Paul McJones [mailto:paul@mcjones.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 11:21 AM To: Brian Randell; Thomas Haigh Cc: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] "Stored program" -- anyone know origins of the PHRASE This is to confirm that Turing's 1945/6 ACE proposal describes the ideas of stored programs (starting on the very first page) but does not use that terminology. Turing does use the word "storage" extensively, but he refers to "instruction tables" rather than "programs". He demonstrates the use of stored programs with an instruction table called INDEXIN that simulates what we would call an indexed load. He also mentions that various aspects of program preparation (e.g., relocating subroutines) could be done within the machine itself, but for pragmatic reasons suggest it be done externally using punched card machines. For those interested, a scan of the 1972 NPL reprint is available here: http://www.npl.co.uk/turing/pilot-ace-proposal and a scan of the original 1946 report is here: http://www.turingarchive.org/browse.php/C/32 For anyone interested in studying Turing's report I recommend this paper: The other Turing machine B. E. Carpenter and R. W. Doran Computer Journal, Volume 20, Issue 3, Pp. 269-279. http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/3/269.abstract (I learned of the paper by Carpenter and Doran in Brian Randell's The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers.) Paul On Apr 2, 2012, at 1:44 PM, Brian Randell wrote: Hi Tom: Not directly responding to your query, and commenting from memory, rather than having rechecked my sources, my recollection is that the 1945 First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC did not allow operations on stored instructions, but Turing's 1945 proposal for ACE did - to my mind a necessary final step towards the generality that I associate with the stored program computer concept. Cheers Brian On 2 Apr 2012, at 21:34, 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@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 -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. 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