Manchester computers

Manchester computers were a series of early British electronic computers developed at the University of Manchester. Their work established practical electronic stored-program computing and influenced later commercial machines.

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Manchester Baby: The 1948 Manchester experimental computer that first demonstrated electronic execution of a program stored in memory. It was the first machine in the series to run a stored program.
Frederic C. Williams: A British engineer whose cathode-ray-tube memory research helped establish electronic stored-program computing. His memory system made the Manchester prototypes technically possible.
Ferranti Mark 1: The first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer, manufactured by Ferranti and based on Manchester Mark 1 work. It carried Manchester’s experimental design into commercial production.
Ferranti: A British engineering company that manufactured early computers, including the Ferranti Mark 1. Its partnership with Manchester turned university designs into manufactured machines.
Manchester Mark 1: A 1949 Manchester computer that extended the Baby into a more capable general-purpose machine. It developed the Baby’s architecture into a practical research computer.
Tom Kilburn: A British computer pioneer who co-designed the Manchester Baby and led later Manchester computing projects. He helped build and program the first Manchester machines.
Manchester Mark 1 Star: A revised Manchester Mark 1 built with improvements to its instruction set and engineering. This version refined the research machine before its design informed Ferranti’s commercial computer.
Atlas (computer): A pioneering 1960s British supercomputer developed jointly by the University of Manchester, Ferranti, and Plessey. Atlas extended Manchester’s research lineage into high-performance computing.
Williams tube: A cathode-ray-tube device that stores digital data as electrical charge on its screen. It supplied the series’ pioneering form of electronic random-access memory.
Alan Turing: A British mathematician and computer scientist whose work shaped theoretical computing and early computer design. He joined Manchester’s computing effort and contributed to the Mark 1’s programming and applications.