Who developed the earliest stored-program computers, that was funded and purchased from Ferranti in the UK instead?
Manchester Mark 1 The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester from the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) or "Baby" (operational in June 1948). It was also called the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine, or MADM. Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949.
TX-0 The TX-0, for Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo (pronounced "tix oh"), was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. The TX-0 was built in 1955 and went online in 1956 and was used continually through the 1960s at MIT. The transistorized TX-0 computer used 3600 transistors in its computer's circuitry and had also used the Philco high-frequency surface-barrier transistors in its design. In 1953, Philco had developed the world's first high frequency surface-barrier transistor, which was also the first transistor that was suitable for high speed computers. The TX-0 and its direct descendant, the original PDP-1, were platforms for pioneering computer research and the development of what would later be called computer "hacker" culture.