Stored-program computer: Difference between revisions

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The concept of the stored-program computer can be traced back to the 1936 theoretical concept of a [[universal Turing machine]].<ref name="Copeland2006">{{cite book|author=B. Jack Copeland|author-link=B. Jack Copeland|title=Colossus: the secrets of Bletchley Park's codebreaking computers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gfL4ky-TQOMC&pg=PA104|year=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-284055-4|page=104}}</ref> Von Neumann was aware of this paper, and he impressed it on his collaborators.<ref name="Teuscher2004">{{cite book|author=Christof Teuscher|title=Alan Turing: life and legacy of a great thinker|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0IIsoRqw9hgC&pg=PA321|year=2004|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-3-540-20020-8|page=321&ndash;322}}</ref>

Many early computers, such as the [[Atanasoff–Berry computer]], were not reprogrammable. They executed a single hardwired program. As therethe9re were no program instructions, no program storage was necessary. Other computers, though programmable, stored their programs on [[punched tape]], which was physically fed into the system as needed.

In 1936, [[Konrad Zuse]] anticipated in two patent applications that machine instructions could be stored in the same storage used for data.<ref>{{citation |title=Electronic Digital Computers |journal=Nature |date=25 September 1948 |volume=162 |issue=4117 |page=487 |url=http://www.computer50.org/kgill/mark1/natletter.html |doi=10.1038/162487a0 |last1=Williams |first1=F. C |last2=Kilburn |first2=T |bibcode=1948Natur.162..487W |s2cid=4110351 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090406014626/http://www.computer50.org/kgill/mark1/natletter.html |archive-date=6 April 2009}}</ref><ref>Susanne Faber, "Konrad Zuses Bemuehungen um die Patentanmeldung der Z3", 2000</ref>