ABSTRACT
The construction of the first practical stored-program computer, the Cambridge University Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), has been widely- and justifiably- celebrated as a triumphal moment in the history of modern computing. Inside every stored-program computer programs are stored in pure binary- a pattern of machine representations of ones and zeros. Although programming languages and other utilities helped computer users to develop their software more effectively, programming costs remained the single largest expense of running a computer installation. The Computer Usage Company was founded in New York City in March 1955 by two scientific programmers from International Business Machines (IBM). The first professional society for computer specialists was founded in 1946 as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). By the mid-1970s all the existing computer manufacturers were important members of the software-products industry. By the 1990s, the old-line software-products industry was being eclipsed by Microsoft and the other leading personal-computer software companies.
