Stored Program Electronic Computers

The final major step in the development of the general-purpose electronic computer was the idea of a stored program, i.e. of a computer’s activity being controlled by a program stored in its internal memory, along with the numerical quantities entering into the computation. At first great advantage was taken of the consequent ability of a program to read and modify itself during the course of a computation, since such ideas as index registers and indirect addressing had still to be thought of. However of more lasting significance was the fact that for the first time it became a practical and attractive proposition to use a computer to assist with the preparation of its own programs, thus opening the way to the development of programming aids such as assemblers, compilers, operating systems, etc.