Edsac Tutorial Guide

Department of Computer Science, University of WarwickCoventry CV4 7AL, UKEdsacPCA Tutorial Guide to theEDSAC SimulatorbyMartin Campbell KellyWindows 95, 98 and NT EditionJuly 2001© Martin Campbell Kelly, 1990 2001The CoverThe cover illustration shows aninteractive computer game ofTic Tac Toe developed by a studentprogrammer in 1952.To play the game, Open… OXO in thefolder of Edsac demonstrationprograms, and press the Start button.Enter your moves using the telephonedial.A copy of the Edsac simulator can bedownloaded from the Edsac website:http://edsac.netEdsacA Tutorial Guide to the EDSAC SimulatorbyMartin Campbell KellyAbstractThe EDSAC was the world’s first stored program computer to operate a regularcomputing service. Designed and built at Cambridge University, the EDSACperformed its first fully automatic calculation on 6 May 1949. The WarwickUniversity simulator is a faithful emulation of the EDSAC designed to run on apersonal computer. The user interface has all the controls and displays of the originalmachine, and the system includes a library of original programs, subroutines,debugging software, and program documentation. This report includes a description ofthe EDSAC and an account of the seminal programming techniques developed for itduring 1949 51. Several demonstration programs and programming problems aresupplied, so that users can gain first hand experience of what it was like to developand run a program on a first ...