|
Sir Maurice Wilkes, widely regarded as the Father of British Computing, passed away on 30 November 2010, aged 97.
He was best known as the designer and creator of EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) which became the first practical stored-program computer when it ran its initial calculation on May 6, 1949 in Cambridge, England.
EDSAC, however, wasn't his only innovation. In 1951 he set to work on developing the concept of microprogramming. This was derived from the realisation that the Central Processing Unit of a computer could be controlled by a miniature, highly specialised computer program in high-speed ROM - the so called "microcode" way of building a machine. The results of his work meant that CPU development was greatly simplified.
Maurice Wilkes was awarded the Turing Award in 1967, the Faraday Medal from the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London in 1981 and the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology in 1992. He was knighted in 2000.
Further reading:
Maurice Wilkes and EDSAC
UK Micros of the 1980s
Something special happened in the UK at the start of the 1980s and it altered the face of computing as we know it. You may be of the opinion that all that ever happ [ ... ]
|
Steve Wozniak
Woz was born 60 years ago today on 11th August 1950. As co-designer of the Apple computer he is one of the computer pioneers who have changed the way we work and play. But he was also something much r [ ... ]
| | Other Articles |
|
