Programming experts and novices are being invited to enter a competition to write a software program for what is claimed to be the world’s first stored program digital computer called the ‘baby.’ The machine is being rebuilt to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its birth at the University of Manchester, UK and the competition winner will be invited to run their program on the computer exactly 50 years to the day after the first program was run. What made the baby unique was it was the first to use software – other computers of the time needed changes in wire connections. Although the baby weights a ton and contains 600 valves, it is only as powerful as a child’s calculator and has 1024 bits of memory. Competition details are on http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/prog98/
