When the world’s first stored-program computer ran its first program

June 20, 2021 12:31 am | Updated November 18, 2021 03:03 pm IST When you swipe across the apps on a smartphone, or stare at the computer screen while attending your classes during the ongoing pandemic, do you ever stop to marvel at their wonders? We wouldn’t be able to go any earlier than the Baby, however, for it was the world’s first stored-program electronic computer. Englishmen Frederic Calland Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootill were the developers of Baby, a machine of critical importance in the evolution of computers. And then, on June 21, 1948, a program stored in an electronic memory was executed successfully for the first time anywhere in the world by Baby. While individual computers previously had been built to cater to specific problems, the Baby showed that one computer could do different jobs and solve a variety of problems.