Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes was an English computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits. At the time of his death, Wilkes was an Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge.
Maurice Wilkes in 1980
Maurice Wilkes (right) with the Meccano differential analyser in the Cambridge University Mathematics Laboratory, c. 1937. A. F. Devonshire (left) co-authored a number of papers on melting and disorder with the Laboratory's first director, John Lennard-Jones. The winner of the 1937 Mayhew Prize, J. Corner, is operating the input table (centre).
Maurice Wilkes inspecting the mercury delay line of the EDSAC in construction
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England. EDSAC was the second electronic digital stored-program computer to go into regular service.
EDSAC I in June 1948
9-inch tubes used for monitoring
William Renwick with 5-hole tape reader and Creed teleprinter
Maurice Wilkes inspecting the mercury delay line of the EDSAC in construction
