A digital computer program contains instructions for processing data. A stored computer program is one that is held in the computer along with the data--the method used by today's computers, developed during the 1930s and 1940s using a nineteenth-century design.

Stored program use is a two-step process. First the program is loaded from disk or tape into the computer's memory or provided on a special computer chip. Then the processor copies the program into its own unit and carries out the instructions.

The nineteenth-century English mathematician Charles Babbage was the first to use the word store to describe a computer program location. Babbage's Analytical Engine design, a forerunner of the modern computer, was based on a cotton mill. The mill performed the computer operations, and the store was the location of the original numbers and the results of the mill's operations.

The term storage carried over...