Inventing the User: EDS AC in Context

摘要

Electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC) is rightly celebrated as the first internal stored-program computer to provide useful problem solving services. This paper identifies the user as an emergent new class of practitioner, and locates EDSAC in the context of the history of the internal stored program widely held to be the defining feature of the modern digital computer. The significance of the stored-program concept is far from self-evident and an interpretation of its defining role, as well as EDSAC's part in this, is offered.