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Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer (History of Computing)

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he helped develop radar

Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer (History of Computing)
Maurice V. Wilkes
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0262231220

Book Description

Maurice Wilkes was one of the leading scientific explorers in the development of the modern digital computer. He directed the Mathematical Laboratory (later named the Computer Laboratory) at Cambridge University, where he and his team built the EDSAC, the first stored program digital computer to go into service.

Wilkes describes in nontechnical detail the growth of EDSAC and its successor, EDSAC 2, his introduction of microprogramming, 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 universally, and he reviews his anticipatory efforts to develop simple programming systems. 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 programs of development. He deftly sketches his childhood in the English midlands and his student days at Cambridge where he studied mathematical physics, and his boyhood fascination with radio matured. He conveys the excitement of sudden insights and long-sought breakthroughs against life's simpler pleasures and trials. His account brims with assessments and anecdotes of such contemporaries as Turing, Hartree, von Neumann, Aiken, and a dozen others. And with his impressions of America and Germany formed during his scientific journeys.

Customer Reviews:

he helped develop radar.......2006-07-05

Wilkes' biography is interesting not just because he was one of the early computer pioneers. At a time when a computer was a person who used an electromechanical calculator, and not a machine that did computations. He also gives us a view into Britain of the 1930s and 40s.

Above all, of being involved in the development of radar. His experiences as one of the boffins during World War 2 makes good reading. He explains the life and death technical issues involved in developing radar and continually improving it. Until the US entered the war and the MIT Radar Lab took over most of the Allied radar effort, he and others in Britain were the front line of radar engineering.

After the war, we see how he was involved with seminal ideas like microprogramming. These helped him win a Turing Award.

So Many Hills to Climb: My Journey as a Computer Pioneer

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Where the Action Is
An Emeritus English Professor reviews this book
One life is not enough

So Many Hills to Climb: My Journey as a Computer Pioneer
Arthur Porter
Manufacturer: Beckham Publications Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0931761182

Book Description

Born in the district of Cumbria in northwest England almost a century ago, Arthur Porter describes a remarkable life with eloquent sensitivity and charming candor. This memoir by a major contributor to modern science is filled with vivid accounts of both his personal experiences and professional accomplishments. As a third-year student at the University of Manchester, Porter worked with Douglas Hartree, one of the most influential computer pioneers of his day. Porter was also a colleague of Marshall McLuhan. His faculty assignments have taken him to the University of Toronto, the University of London, the University of Manchester, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Royal Military College of Science. A scientist yes, but with catholic interests: He has chaired a Royal Commission, a World's Fair Advisory Committee and several advisory bodies on topics like environmental protection, nuclear power and automation and employment. Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, Porter was recently awarded an honorary degree from the University of Manchester. Arthur Porter is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He and his wife Patricia are residents of Bermuda Village, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews:

Where the Action Is.......2005-01-03

Arthur Porter has lived an extraordinarily full life. Born and raised in England's Lake Country, he acquired a solid education in local schools and the University of Manchester. He obtained his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in a department previously led by Lord Rutherford and, at the time of Porter's graduate experience, supervised by Sir Lawrence Bragg. Both Rutherford and Bragg were Nobel laureates, and yet another Nobel laureate, Sir John Cockroft, was examiner for Porter's Ph.D. thesis. This remarkable exposure at the beginning of his career, was further enriched by his distinguished supervisor, Douglas Hartree, and a string of high-powered visitors. What a launch to an academic career!
Porter was a pioneer in analog computing, having built one of the early differential analyzers, an accomplishment which thrust him into the mainstream of work on a wide variety of applications such as control systems, feed-back, protection of electrical lines against lightning, calibration of early radar (during W.W.2), the solution of differential equations required to design protection of shipping against magnetic mines. His expertise and ability accounted for a host of major appointments from Manchester to Admiralty Research Laboratories to M.I.T. to Military College of Science to Ferranti Electric Ltd. to Imperial College to University of Saskatchewan, University of Toronto and University of Western Ontario. Along the way he has been associated with perhaps a dozen Nobel winners. In Toronto he was a colleague and admirer of Marshall McLuhan. He describes all these experiences and associations with gusto and boyish enthusiasm. Likwise his enthusiasm permeates his account of his personal life and his travels, some of which read like the works of a skilled travel promoter. Among his talents, Porter has displayed an uncanny knack for fortuitously meeting on a personal level such celebrities as Helen Hayes, Spencer Tracy, Gene Tierney, the Beatles, all of which makes for entertaining reading.
Porter has assembled his memories into a rich story of an important life, filled indiscriminately with everything that has interested him - and everything has!
The reader is made aware that the author's peripatetic career was made possible by the quiet competence of his life partner, Patricia, who made travel arrangements, located and rented apartments, bought and furnished homes, and in general handled the logistics of a husband who was always running to the next adventure.

An Emeritus English Professor reviews this book.......2004-12-08

So Many Hills to Climb. After I had finished reading Arthur Porter's memoirs I asked him how many Nobel prize winners he had known or worked with, he paused, then said, "Twenty. No, twenty one."

This book tells the story of a remarkable journey by a remarkable man. Beginning in the Lake District of northern England, it traces his life through World War I, Manchester University, MIT, World War II, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Toronto, to royal commissions and appointments to his life in Florida and North Carolina after retirement, if you can call the active life he leads a retirement.

He worked with Dr. Vannevar Bush at MIT before WW II, with Marshall McLuhan in Toronto, was there at the University of Manchester helping in the birth of the computer -- he built a mechanical model, a differential analyzer, of one there in 1934 -- and invented a tracking system for radar during the early days of WW II, and was head of a Canadian commission to study electricity and nuclear power.

But this is a personal book, too, that tells such stories as his driving his Berkeley with the top down in -25 degree weather in Saskatoon just to get to class on time, a story still talked about there. I was amazed at the details he remembers and how entertaining his writing style is.

This is life story by one of the major figures in modern science, a man who was so involved the things around him that he not only served as the Canadian representative to the American Atomic Energy Commission, but was also the chairman of the planning group for the Canadian world's fair.

His honors include the Order of Canada, the Canadian Centenary Medal, the Canadian Confederation Medal, and the Queen's Silver Jubilee, and various medals awarded during hid service in WW II.

After you read this book you will count Arthur Porter as one of your friends.

One life is not enough.......2004-11-06

This is an entertaining story of the life of a major contributor to science, technology and education throughout the greater part of the 20th Century. The thought that came to mind on first reading was that no man has the right to leave his mark on so many institutions and disciplines and influence so many people in a single lifetime, albeit one so long. From the delightfully disarming cover illustration (designed and executed by the Author's wife) to the fitting Epilogue, the book is a compelling read.

I have to confess to having known the Author most of my life − but mainly at a distance. Our lives have been roughly parallel, touching only very occasionally. But as I, like the Author, have lived and worked in the UK, the US and Canada, in industry universities and governments I have some understanding of the challenges and delights he encountered on his journey through life.

The hills in the title are the challenges he continually sought and overcame. The journey is his journey through life from his early days in North-west England to his still-busy retirement in North Carolina. Early chapters reveal that the Author was a pioneer of computing. He built mechanical computers in the early 1930s in Manchester University and MIT. He was engaged on sophisticated radar design during the war and, after the war, he led an industry team in Canada that was at the cutting edge of high-speed computing and wireless data transmission.

The chapters on his influential work at The Royal Military College of Science, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario reveal strong views on engineering education and, indeed on education in general.

The Author gives an account of his participation in two Royal Commissions, one of which, the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, he headed. The latter leads to a chapter on the role of nuclear power as fossil fuel supplies decline.

The book is written in a flowing, good-humored style and is generally easy to read. It exhibits the Author's facility for the description of people and places, whether they are in the UK, the US or Canada. Occasionally, particularly in later chapters, the flow is interrupted by an enthusiastically detailed account of the issue under discussion - a trade-off between continuity and detail that is often very difficult for an author.

What characterizes the book more than anything is the Author's irrepressible enthusiasm and almost childlike, wide-eyed wonder as each achievement is revealed and each accolade received.

I regard the book as a significant contribution to the history of the 20th century from the 1920s to the end of the century. It is easy for anyone to read. I thoroughly recommend it.

Early Years in Machine Translation: Memoirs and Biographies of Pioneers (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science Series III: Studies in the History of the Language Sciences)

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Early Years in Machine Translation: Memoirs and Biographies of Pioneers (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science Series III: Studies in the History of the Language Sciences)

Manufacturer: John Benjamins Publishing Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1588110133

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MEMOIRS OF A COMPUTER PIONEER
Maurice Wilkes
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OR7JV2

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Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer
Maurice Wilkes
Manufacturer: MIT PRESS @
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N767FC

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