Williams and Kilburn: the Manchester small-scale stored-program machine

What changed

A working electronic stored-program machine demonstrated execution from changeable memory without rewiring.

Scientific scope

1948 two-author Nature letter and reported demonstration; Tootill's contribution and later Manchester Mark 1 excluded.

Evidence

The linked sources identify this contribution and its scope. WRS has not independently reconstructed the scientific claims. The record is the exact 1948 two-author Nature report. Geoff Tootill, Max Newman, memory-device work and later Manchester Mark 1 engineering remain separately attributable.

Contributors

• Frederic C. Williams · SCIENCE: Named source author of the scoped work; individual effort shares are not measured.
• Tom Kilburn · SCIENCE: Named source author of the scoped work; individual effort shares are not measured.

• Williams and Kilburn, Electronic Digital Computers
• University of Manchester, Mark 1 documents

Provisional WRS assessment, edition 2026-10-16.1. Independent expert calibration is pending. This grade does not certify correctness or assign ownership.

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