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Wednesday, May 29, 2024
This post is a collection of quotes about EDSAC (initially released in 1949). There are 6 quotes listed below. License: CC BY-SA 4.0
1. "The EDSAC's main memory consisted of 1,024 locations, though only 512 locations were initially installed. Each contained 18 bits... An instruction consisted of a 5-bit instruction code, 1 spare bit, a 10-bit operand (usually a memory address), and 1 length bit to control whether the instruction used a 17-bit or a 35-bit operand..." (Wikipedia: EDSAC, 5.22.24 UTC 06:29)
2. "Users prepared their programs by punching them (in assembler) onto a paper tape... When a program was ready, it was hung on a length of line strung up near the paper-tape reader. The machine operators, who were present during the day, selected the next tape from the line and loaded it into EDSAC." (Wikipedia: EDSAC, 5.22.24 UTC 06:29)
3. "The instructions available were: add, subtract, multiply-and-add, AND-and add, shift left, arithmetic shirt right, load multiple register, store (and optionally clear) accumulator, conditional goto, read input tape, print character, round accelerator, no-op, stop." (Wikipedia: EDSAC, 5.22.24 UTC 06:29)
4. "Users wrote programs that called a routine by jumping to the start of the subroutine with the return address (i.e. the location plus-one of the jump itself) in the accumulator (a Wheeler Jump). By convention the subroutine expected this, and the first thing it did was to modify its concluding jump instruction to that return address." (Wikipedia: EDSAC, 5.22.24 UTC 06:29)
5. "By 1951, 87 subroutines in the following categories were available for general use: floating-point arithmetic, arithmetic operations on complex numbers, checking, division, exponentiation, routines relating to functions, differential equations, special functions, power series, logarithms, miscellaneous, print and layout, quadrature, read (input), nth root, trigonometric functions, counting operations (simulating repeat until loops, while loops and for loops), vectors, and matrices." (Wikipedia: EDSAC, 5.22.24 UTC 06:29)
6. "The first assembly language appeared for the EDSAC, and inspired several other assembly languages: Regional Assembly Language, Whirlwind assembler, Rochester assembler." (Wikipedia: EDSAC, 5.22.24 UTC 06:29)