On June 21, 1948, at what was then known as the Victoria University of Manchester, software was born. On that day 65 years ago, a proof-of-concept computer called "Baby"—officially designated as the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine—ran the first "program" retrieved not from paper tape or hard-set switches, but from random-access memory.

Designed by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Tootil, Baby wasn't the first programmable computer. But the technology proven in Baby, with its 1,024 bits of cathode-tube based RAM, would become the basis of the first commercial computers.

In celebration of Baby's birthday, here's a look back at the first decade of computing and the computers that led to the birth of software and the computing revolution that would follow.