David J. Wheeler created the first assembly language. While working as part of a team on the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer, Wheeler was responsible for creating the system of word-based instructions that told the computer what to do. This instruction set formed the first assembly language.
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer was a project run at Cambridge University by Maurice V. Wilkes in the Computer Laboratory. David Wheeler acted as the first programmer for the team that worked with Wilkes. Wheeler's instruction set created simple words to replace the binary numbers that told the computer what to do, which allowed non-specialists to write code for the computer to follow. As the first assembly language, Wheeler's instruction set formed the basis of all of today's modern programming languages.