Maurice Wilkes

Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010) was a British computer scientist who led the development of EDSAC, one of the first practical stored-program computers, and introduced microprogramming.

David Wheeler: A British computer scientist who helped develop EDSAC and created the Wheeler jump subroutine technique. Wheeler worked with Wilkes at Cambridge and helped make EDSAC programming practical.
EDSAC: An early electronic stored-program computer built at the University of Cambridge and operational in 1949. Wilkes directed the project that made EDSAC one of the first practical stored-program computers.
University of Cambridge: A university in Cambridge, England, and the institutional home of Wilkes’s computing research. Wilkes built the Mathematical Laboratory into a center for computer construction and use.
Computer programming: The process of specifying instructions that make a computer perform tasks. Wilkes helped establish programming as a practical discipline through EDSAC’s routine use.
Stanley Gill: A British computer scientist who contributed to EDSAC and early computer programming methods. Gill was part of the Cambridge team that built and programmed EDSAC.
Microprogramming: A method of controlling a processor through low-level instructions stored in a control memory. Wilkes proposed microprogramming to simplify the design of a computer’s control unit.
Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory: A Cambridge research unit that developed and operated early electronic computers. Wilkes led the laboratory where EDSAC was designed, built, and used.
David Wheeler's subroutine library: A collection of reusable EDSAC programs published by David Wheeler in 1951. It grew from programming practices developed on the machine Wilkes led.
Alan Turing: A British mathematician and computer scientist whose work shaped theoretical computing and artificial intelligence. Turing’s theoretical account of computation formed part of the intellectual world Wilkes helped turn into machines.
Stored-program computer: A computer that stores program instructions in memory alongside data. EDSAC’s defining capability was executing instructions held in electronic memory.

Linked from 2 pages

IBM 7030 StretchRelated: Wilkes’s microprogramming work informed a control technique used in Stretch.