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EDSAC 2 was an early
computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
(operational in 1958), the successor to the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). It was the first computer to have a microprogrammed control unit and a bit-slice hardware architecture. First calculations were performed on incomplete machine in 1957. Calculations about elliptic curves performed on EDSAC-2 in the early 1960s led to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, a Millennium Prize Problem, unsolved as of 2022. And in 1963, Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews used EDSAC 2 to generate a seafloor magnetic anomaly map from data collected in the Indian Ocean by H.M.S. Owen, key evidence that helped support Plate Tectonic theory.


References

Early British computers One-of-a-kind computers University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory History of Cambridge {{computer-stub