Editing Booting (section)

==== Early computers ====
Early computers in the 1940s and 1950s were one-of-a-kind engineering efforts that could take weeks to program, and program loading was one of many problems that had to be solved. An early computer, [[ENIAC]], had no program stored in memory but was set up for each problem by a configuration of interconnecting cables. Bootstrapping did not apply to ENIAC, whose hardware configuration was ready for solving problems as soon as power was applied.

The [[EDSAC]] system, the second stored-program computer to be built, used [[stepping switch]]es to transfer a fixed program into memory when its start button was pressed. The program stored on this device, which [[David Wheeler (computer scientist)|David Wheeler]] completed in late 1948, loaded further instructions from [[punched tape]] and then executed them.<ref>{{cite journal |author-first=Martin |author-last=Campbell-Kelly |author-link=Martin Campbell-Kelly |title=Programming the EDSAC |journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing |date=1980 |volume=2 |number=1 |pages=7–36 |doi=10.1109/mahc.1980.10009}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-last1=Wilkes |author-first1=Maurice V. |author-link1=Maurice Wilkes |author-last2=Wheeler |author-first2=David J. |author-link2=David Wheeler (computer scientist) |author-last3=Gill |author-first3=Stanley |author-link3=Stanley Gill |date=1951 |title=The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer |publisher=[[Addison-Wesley]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HwkuAAAAIAAJ |access-date=2020-09-25 |archive-date=2023-02-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230220131716/https://books.google.com/books?id=HwkuAAAAIAAJ |url-status=live}}</ref>