Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer (Mit Press Series in the History of Computing)

270 Pages·1985·15.105 MB·English

by  I Wilkes

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and long-sought breakthroughs against
life's simpler pleasures and trials. His
account brims with assessments and anec­
dotes of such contemporaries as Turing,
Memoirs of a Hartree, von Neumann, Aiken, and a
Computer Pioneer dozen others—and with his impressions of
by Maurice Wilkes America and Germany formed during his
scientific journeys.
Maurice Willces was one of the leading sci­
Maurice Wilkes retired from his post at
entific explorers in the development of the '
Cambridge University in 1980, when he
modern digital computer. He directed the
becfame a Senior Consulting Engineer at
Mathematical Laboratory (later named the
Digital Equipment Corporation in Massa­
Computer Laboratory) at Cambridge Uni­
chusetts and Adjunct Professor at MIT.
versity,. where he and his team built the
Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer is included
EDSAC, the first stored-program digital
in the History of Computing series, edited
corhputer to go into service.
by I. Bernard Cohen and William Aspray. •
Wilkes describes in nontechnical detail
the growth of EDSAC and its successor,
EDSAC 2, his introduction of micropro­
gramming, and the first experiments with
time-sharing systems. In the 1950s, when
machines were still getting larger rather
than smaller, Wilkes was one of the few
who foresaw a time when nonspecialists
would be using computers almost univer­
sally, and he reviews his anticipatory ef­
forts to develop simple programming sys­
tems. But his book is more than a history
of computing; it also recounts the allied
scientific effort when he was one of those
scientists and engineers ("boffins" as they
were called by the RAF) who were in the
thick of it, his electronics skills enlisted in
the new and exciting development of
radar.
In this absorbing autobiography, Wilkes
is as concerned with people and places as
he is with computer components and pro­
gams of development. He deftly sketches
his childhood in the English midlands and
his student days at Cambridge, where he
studied mathematical physics and his boy­
hood fascination with radio matured. He
conveys the excitement of sudden insights
Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer
MIT Press Series in the History of Computing
I. Bernard Cohen, editor; William Aspray, associate editor
Editorial Board: Bernard Galler, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Michigan; J. A. N. Lee, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg,
Virginia; Arthur Norberg, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis,
Minnesota; Brian Randell, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne;
Henry Tropp, Humboldt State College, Areata, California; Heinz
Zemanek, Vienna, Austria
Memories That Shaped an Industry, Emerson W. Pugh, 1984
The Computer Comes of Age, R. Moreau, 1984
Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer, Maurice V. Wilkes, 1985
Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer
by Maurice \ Wilkes
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 1985 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or
information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the
publisher.
This book was set in Baskerville by The MIT Press Computergraphics
Department, using magnetic tapes supplied by the author, and printed and
bound by Halliday Lithograph in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wilkes, M. V. (Maurice Vincent)
Memoirs of a computer pioneer.
(MIT Press series in the history of computing)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Computers—History. 2. Wilkes, M. V. (Maurice Vincent) 3. Engineers—Great
Britain—Biography.
I. Title. II. Series.
QA76.17.W55 1985 001.64'09 85-6667
ISBN 0-262-23122-0
Contents
Series Foreword vii
1
Shooldays 1
2
Undergraduate years 9
3
Post-graduate research 20
4
War 31
5
Experience on radar sites 40
6
Air Defence Experimental Establishment 54
7
Operational research 64
8
TRE 81
9
A trip to Germany 90
vi Contents
10
Post-war reconstruction 103
11
Atmospheric oscillations 111
12
The Moore School 116
13
The EDSA C 127
14
First steps in programming 143
15
Germany revisited 154
16
Computer progress in the United States 160
17
EDSA C 2 184
18
Can machines think and other topics 195
19
Computer progress 1955—80 208
Sources and acknowledgements 231
Index 233
Series Foreword
Maurice V. Wilkes is known to the computer world for his pioneering
breakthrough in constructing the first machine to go into service that
was designed to embody the new concept of the stored program. This
machine, EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), was
constructed in the Mathematical Laboratory (later known as the Com­
puter Laboratory) of Cambridge University. It performed its first cal­
culation on 6 May 1949 and was in continuous use until 1958. Most
critical historians of the computer do not consider any machine to be
a “computer” unless it embodies the stored-program concept; the
EDSAC is by this criterion the first fully operational computer. Ac­
cording to a statement made by Wilkes, the EDSAC “was designed
according to the principles expounded by J. Presper Eckert, Jr., John
W. Mauchly, and others at the summer school held in 1946 at the
Moore School of Electrical Engineering” of the University of Penn­
sylvania, which Wilkes was “privileged to attend.” The EDSAC was
the inspiration for one of the earliest commercial computers, the LEO,
completed in 1951 by the Lyons Company, whose computer operations
today form part of ICL.
Wilkes had in mind three objectives from the beginning: (1) to show
that a binary stored-program computer could be constructed and
operated, (2) to make a start with a development of programming
techniques, even then seen by him to be a subject of more than trivial
content, and (3) to apply the techniques developed in a variety of
application fields. Wilkes succeeded better than any other early pioneer
in his second objective. According to his colleague Stanley Gill, Wilkes
“led the first practical development of programming for stored-pro-
gram machines including the first program library” of subroutines.
The new programming techniques were described in a book published
in 1951, by Wilkes, Gill, and David Wheeler, which served as the basic
primer on the subject for more than a decade in Britain and the United
States.1 Another area in which he was an important pioneer was a
viii Series Foreword
specific technique “to provide a systematic approach and an orderly
approach to designing the control section of any computer system.”
We are told that in this context, “the term ‘control’ is taken to mean
the interpretation and execution of a machine instruction.” Wilkes is
also known for later developments in machine-independent computing.
In this connection he developed an elementary language for list­
processing known as WISP. He also contributed to the development
and use of time-sharing systems.
Fellow of the Royal Society (1956), Wilkes was the first president
of the British Computer Society (1957-1960) and the first member
from the United Kingdom of the Council of IFIP (1960—1963). He gave
the ACM Turing Lecture in 1967 and received the AFIPS Harry Goode
Award in 1968. Elected a Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Acad­
emy of Engineering in 1977, he was elected three years later to the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences. After a distinguished career at
Cambridge University Wilkes came to the United States in 1980 and
joined Digital Equipment Corporation as a senior consulting engineer.
Wilkes’s autobiography spans the early years of the development
of the computer. It is a work of particular interest, furthermore, because
it relates Wilkes’s experience during World War II as a “boffin,” that
is, a scientist in military service. It is difficult to think of any other
account that portrays this activity with the vivid qualities of the present
book. This aspect is of significance, for, as Wilkes exemplifies and as
others have observed, many of the early pioneers in the computer
field drew heavily on their experience of electronics in wartime service.
This book is part of a series devoted to the history of computers
and data processing. Other volumes have dealt with, or will deal with,
various aspects of the development of systems, hardware, and software,
encompassing both general works and specialized monographs. Some
of these may concentrate on a particular development, such as magnetic
memory, or the technical history of an industrial company. This is
the first work in the series of an autobiographical nature. It is certainly
to be hoped that other pioneers will make their experiences available
to us and that we will be able to publish additional critical and bio­
graphical accounts of those who have made the modem computer.
I. Bernard Cohen, Editor
William Aspray, Associate Editor1
1. See Maurice V. Wilkes, David J. Wheeler, and Stanley Gill, The Preparation of Programs for an
Electronic Digital Computer, with special reference to the EDSAC and the use of a library of subroutines
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Press, Inc., 1951; reprinted by Tomash Publishers
and The MIT Press, 1982).