[Simh] programming in binary

[dave porter]

As I understand it. the EDSAC (the first or second, depending on how you 
counted, stored-program machine in production service) had an 
assembler/bootstrap (modern terminology, or course) program wired into a 
bank of uniselectors as the 'initial orders'.  This allowed for 
single-character instruction mnemonics and decimal storage addresses. 'A' 
for 'add' seems clear enough to me, but 'V' for multiply-and-add is less so. 
So, we apparently had assemblers from more-or-less the very beginning.