EDSAC (the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) was the first full-scale electronic computer to implement the stored-program principle. The stored-program principle sates that both data and programming are to be stored in the computer's main memory and accessed during run-time. EDSAC executed its first program on May 6, 1949 at Cambridge University in England.

The development of EDSAC was largely due to the efforts of English computer scientist Maurice Vincent Wilkes (1913- ). Educated as a mathematical physicist, Wilkes had been involved in British radar development during World War II. After the war, Wilkes took a position with the computing laboratory at Cambridge University. Wilkes's subsequent development of computers at Cambridge was to be heavily influenced by computer development in America. In his book Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer, Wilkes wrote:

• In the middle of May 1946 I had a visit from...