Today in 1947, John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly applied for a U.S. patent on delay-line electronic memory system.
From the patent application: “Memory systems… are required in a large variety of devices for carrying out logical procedures wherein they have the function of receiving information, holding it, and transmitting it when and if required.”
From Modern Computing by Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi:
The [1944] proposal to build EDVAC… centered on a new kind of memory… the delay line… It took years of engineering frutrtions to make the delay line memory work reliably, but the diea was simple and compelling. Pulses representing several hundred digits moved thorugh a fluid-filled tube. Singals received at one end were immediately retransmitted at the other end, so that the same sequence was cycling colnstantly. Whenever a umber eache dthe end of gthe tube it was available to be copied to the computer’s processor if needed.
Patent 2,629,827 was granted in February 1953.