ENIAC’s 1948 conversion replaced much of its plugboard-style setup with coded instructions selected from function-table switches, dramatically changing how the machine was programmed while exposing competing meanings of “stored program.”
The Institute for Advanced Study machine paired a widely copied stored-program architecture with published coding methods, spreading both a hardware model and a style of numerical instruction programming.
The Ferranti Mark 1 moved stored-program computing from a university prototype into commercial service, forcing programming conventions, manuals, user support, and machine time to become operational concerns.
The EDVAC design and John von Neumann's widely circulated 1945 report helped spread a new architecture in which instructions could be represented in the same memory system used for numerical data.
On 21 June 1948 the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine successfully executed a program stored in its electronic memory, demonstrating the stored-program concept in working hardware.
EDSAC ran its first program at Cambridge in May 1949 and quickly became a working scientific service, demonstrating that stored-program computers could move from experimental prototypes into everyday research infrastructure.