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Today in Tech History: June 21, 2008 Video

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Today in Tech History: June 21, 2008
Created: 06/19/2008
Video description: The first computer program stored in electronic memory. Plus: SpaceShipOne!

Today in Tech History: June 21, 2008 Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Molly Wood. It's June 21, 2008, and here's what happened today in technology history. On this date in 1948, the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, otherwise known as the "Manchester Baby" ran the first ever computer program stored in electronic memory. That program consisted of 17 instructions that directed the computer to find the highest proper factor of 218 by trying every integer from 218 down to 1. It took Baby 3.5 million operations and 52 minutes to come up with the answer. The achievement led to the development of the Ferranti Mark 1, one of the earliest general-purpose computers to be publicly sold. Also on this date in 2004, SpaceShipOne completed the first privately funded MANNED spaceflight. Later that year, it went on to win the $10 million dollar Ansari XPrize for privately funded space flight. And that's it for today, high fliers. We'll be back tomorrow with more tech milestones ... even the publicly funded ones. Are there any? Hmm ...

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