[sdiy] Turing's Cathedral

[Neil Johnson]

Dan Snazelle wrote:
> Tons of anctedotes about electronics, shift registers, flip-flops, (cathode ray) memory, as well as great stories of von neuman, einstein, turing, godel, IAS, etc

I was fortunate enough to be doing my PhD at the Cambridge University
Computer Lab when both Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler were still
with us (RIP).  Both true giants in the history of computing, both
knew Turing, and both still very much intellectually active right up
to their departures.  I have fond memories of having tea with David
and discussing various computing topics, from compilers to instruction
sets to memory architectures to power electronics.

Oh, if you've never heard of David Wheeler its highly likely you have
used at least one of his inventions - the "Wheeler Jump".  Or, as we
call it nowadays, a function call.   And if you've ever used
bzip2..... again, thanks to David (with Michael Burrows) who devised
the original block sorting compression technique.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_%28computer_scientist%29
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/wheeler_david.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilkes

If you're ever in Cambridge and interested in computer history the
Computer Lab has some original EDSAC items on display - valve racks,
mercury delay lines, core memories, etc.

Cheers,
Neil
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