Cambridge built the computer that turned up for work
- EDSAC, 1949
- The world’s first webcam
- Silicon Fen
- A science park since 1970
How Cambridge grew
The short version, in order. Pick a year.
EDSAC runs
Maurice Wilkes’ machine became the first stored-program computer in regular working use — a less glamorous claim than being first outright, and a more useful one.
From EDSAC to a camera pointed at a coffee pot
EDSAC ran its first programs in Cambridge in 1949 and became the first stored-program computer in regular working use, which is a less glamorous claim than being first outright and a more useful one. Maurice Wilkes had built a machine that did a job every day.
Forty years later the university produced something sillier and just as consequential. In 1991 Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky pointed a greyscale camera at the coffee pot outside the Trojan Room so they could stop climbing three flights of stairs to find it empty. In November 1993 it was connected to the web, and the world had its first webcam. It ran until 2001.
The same instinct — solve the small annoyance properly — built Silicon Fen around it.
What that means if you trade in Cambridge
Cambridge customers are unusually willing to read detail and unusually quick to spot padding. This is a city where a page that explains exactly how something works will outperform one that gushes about passion and excellence.
It is also a small city with a large transient population: students, researchers, visitors. If you serve the town rather than the science park, saying so plainly is worth more than any amount of polish.
What Cambridge businesses ask us for
Explain, do not sell
Detail lands here. Say what the process is, what it costs and what could go wrong, and the enquiry arrives already convinced.
Town or Science Park
They are different markets with different budgets. Pick the one you want and write for it.
Be findable on a phone
A city of cyclists and walkers searches on the move. Address, hours and phone number should be reachable in one tap.
The tech scene here
Silicon Fen is the densest technology cluster in the country outside London, and an unusually deep one: chip design, software and biotech rather than consumer apps. Around fifteen hundred companies employ something over fifty thousand people between them.
The lineage is remarkable for one city — Acorn Computers in 1978, Arm in 1990, and more recently Raspberry Pi, Darktrace and others. Cambridge Science Park, founded by Trinity College in 1970, is still the centre of gravity, with Microsoft, AMD and Raspberry Pi among the names on site.
The practical read for a smaller firm: this is a town full of people who build things properly and can tell when you have not.
How well do you know Cambridge?
Five quick questions. Get all five right and you win a 10% off discount code for your website. Every answer is somewhere on this page, so have a read if you get stuck.
Cambridge quiz · 1 of 5
What was EDSAC the first computer to do?
Common questions
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