The First Electronic Stored Program Runs（1940s black-and-white laboratory photography）

78 years agoThe Transistor and the Computer

1948-06-21

The First Electronic Stored Program Runs

The University of Manchester's experimental Baby computer successfully ran a program held in electronic memory, demonstrating a computing approach in which both instructions and data reside in the machine.

Art style · 1940s black-and-white laboratory photography

World population

2.46Bpeople

Primary energy power

3.1×10¹²W

London → New York message

0.02 seconds

Civilization metrics

Each sparkline shows the documented history of a metric on a logarithmic time axis. The dot marks the selected moment.

Kardashev index

0.649

Based on primary energy power · Type I = 1

World population

2.46Bpeople

1/3 of today

Total human primary energy power

3.1×10¹²W

1/7 of today

Compute per dollar

2×10⁻³floating-point operations per second per dollar (FLOP/s per $, nominal dollars)

1/41.19T of today

Fastest delivery time for a message from London to New York

0.02 seconds

1 times faster than today

Fastest speed reached by humans

1,644km/h

1/24 of today

Near this moment

The eight closest milestones. Select a title to jump there.

1942-12-02Energy
Chicago Pile-1 achieves the first man-made self-sustaining chain reaction. Source
1945-07-16Energy
The Trinity test detonates the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. Source
1946-02-15Computing
ENIAC, a general-purpose electronic computer, is publicly unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania. Source
1947-12Computing
Bardeen and Brattain at Bell Labs build the point-contact transistor. Source
1948Computing
Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication": information becomes measurable. Source
1948-06-21Computing
The University of Manchester's experimental Baby computer successfully ran a program held in electronic memory, demonstrating a computing approach in which both instructions and data reside in the machine. Source
1950Intelligence
Turing publishes "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", proposing the "imitation game". Source
1953-04-25Humanity
Watson and Crick publish the molecular structure of DNA in Nature. Source

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Scenes across eras

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The Transistor and the Computer

6 scenes · Select a scene to visit that moment

Electronic computers and the transistor appear, information theory and artificial intelligence are proposed, and computation begins to be automated.

Playable workshops

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Every timeline entry cites its source. Metrics interpolate logarithmically between sourced data points. Forecasts include institutional and community views, and attributed site scenarios; years are not guaranteed realization dates. Illustrations are AI-generated in each era's style.

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