Professor Anderson offered a challenge to the usual account of the development of the first stored-program computer - the Manchester Baby. In doing so, he focused on the contribution made to the project by the topologist M.H.A. (Max) Newman and other members of the Department of Mathematics.
Based on an extensive re-examination of the primary source material, he suggested that a very much more significant role was played by mathematicians than is allowed for in the dominant discourse. In the course of his talk, he identified and debunked three persistent myths, which lend support to the dominant narrative.