Maurice Wilkes Quotes

• As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Mistake, Technology, Coders

  "The Design and Use of the EDSAC". Lecture delivered at the Digital Computer Museum, September 23, 1979.

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• I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Mistake, Coders, Debugging

  Lecture titled "The Design and Use of the EDSAC" delivered by Maurice Wilkes at the Digital Computer Museum, tcm.computerhistory.org. September 23, 1979.

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• Professor Wilkes is best known as the builder and designer of the EDSAC, the first computer with an internally stored program. Built in 1949, the EDSAC used a mercury delay line memory. He is also known as the author, with Wheeler and Gill, of a volume on "Preparation of Programs for Electronic Digital Computers" in 1951, in which program libraries were effectively introduced.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Memories, Preparation, Library

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• A source of strength in the early days was that groups in various parts of the world were prepared to construct experimental computers without necessarily intending them to be the prototype for serial production. As a result, there became available a body of knowledge about what would work and what would not work.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Groups, World, Body

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 1, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

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• The artificial intelligence approach may not be altogether the right one to make to the problem of designing automatic assembly devices. Animals and machines are constructed from entirely different materials and on quite different principles. When engineers have tried to draw inspiration from a study of the way animals work they have usually been misled; the history of early attempts to construct flying machines with flapping wings illustrates this very clearly.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Inspiration, Animal, Wings

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 4, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

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• Surveying the shifts of interest among computer scientists and the ever-expanding family of those who depend on computers for their work, one cannot help being struck by the power of the computer to bind together, in a genuine community of interest, people whose motivations differ widely.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Motivation, People, Community

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 6, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

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• Much of the early engineering development of digital computers was done in universities. A few years ago, the view was commonly expressed that universities had played their part in computer design, and that the matter could now safely be left to industry. [...] Apart from the obvious functions of keeping in the public domain material that might otherwise be hidden, universities can make a special contribution by reason of their freedom from commercial considerations, including freedom from the need to follow the fashion.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Fashion, Views, Engineering

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 1, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

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• In the judgment of design engineers, the ordinary means of communicating with a computer are entirely inadequate. [...] Graphical communication in some form or other is of vital importance in engineering as that subject is now conducted; we must either provide the capability in our computer systems, or take on the impossible task of training up a future race of engineers conditioned to think in a different way.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Communication, Mean, Thinking

  "Computers Then and Now". Journal of the ACM 15, Sect. 4, (pp. 1-7), January 1968.

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