Maurice Wilkes - EDSAC

EDSAC

Since his laboratory had its own funding, he was immediately able to start work on a small practical machine, the EDSAC, once back at Cambridge. He decided that his mandate was not to invent a better computer, but simply to make one available to the university. Therefore his approach was relentlessly practical. He used only proven methods for constructing each part of the computer. The resulting computer was slower and smaller than other planned contemporary computers. However, his laboratory's computer was the first practical stored program computer to be completed, and operated successfully from May 1949.