Mary Allen Wilkes

Mary Allen Wilkes
Born September 25, 1937 (1937-09-25) (age 79)
Fields Computer Programming, Logic Design, Law
Institutions MIT, Washington University in St. Louis
Alma mater Wellesley College, Harvard Law School
Known for Work with LINC computer

Mary Allen Wilkes (born September 25, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois) is a former computer programmer and logic designer, most known for her work with the LINC computer, now recognized by many as the world's first "personal computer."[1][2][3][4] Wilkes graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 where she majored in philosophy and theology.[5] At that time she wanted to become a lawyer but was discouraged by friends and mentors because she was a woman. She sought work in the computer field partly because computer programming was a field that was open to women and partly because her geography teacher in the eighth grade had told her during a class discussion, "Mary Allen, when you grow up, you ought to be a computer programmer."[6] She had no idea at the time what that meant, but she never forgot it. She finally became an attorney in 1975.[7]

MIT

Wilkes worked under Oliver Selfridge and Benjamin Gold on the Speech Recognition Project at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts from 1959 to 1960, programming the IBM 704 and the IBM 709.[8] She joined the Digital Computer Group, also at Lincoln Laboratory, just as work was beginning on the LINC design under Wesley A. Clark in June 1961. Clark had earlier designed Lincoln's TX-0 and TX-2 computers. Wilkes's contributions to the LINC development included simulating the operation of the LINC during its design phase on the TX-2,[8] designing the console for the prototype LINC and writing the operator's manual for the final console design.[9]

In January, 1963, the LINC group left Lincoln Laboratory to form the Center for Computer Technology in the Biomedical Sciences at MIT's Cambridge, Massachusetts campus, where, in the summer of 1963 it trained the first participants in the LINC Evaluation Program, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.[10] Wilkes taught participants in the program and wrote the early "LAP" (LINC Assembly Program) assembly programs for the 1024-word LINC. She also co-authored the LINC's programming manual, Programming the LINC with Wesley A. Clark.[11]

Washington University

Wilkes - LINC at Home - 1965

In the summer of 1964 a core group from the LINC development team left MIT to form the Computer Systems Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis.[12] Wilkes, who had spent 1964 traveling around the world, rejoined the group in late 1964, but lived and worked from her parents' home in Baltimore until late 1965. She worked there on a LINC provided by the Computer Systems Laboratory and is usually considered to be the first user of a personal computer in the home.[13] Photos were shown of this at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, in November, 2007.[14]

By 1965 the LINC team had doubled the size of the LINC memory to 2048 12-bit words, which enabled Wilkes, working on the LINC at home, to develop the more sophisticated operating system, LAP6. LAP6 incorporated a scroll editing technique which made use of an algorithm proposed by her colleagues, Mishell J. Stucki and Severo M. Ornstein.[15] LAP6, which has been described as "outstandingly well human engineered,"[16] provided the user the ability to prepare, edit, and manipulate documents (usually LINC programs) interactively in real time, using the LINC's keyboard and display, much like later personal computers. The LINC tapes performed the function of the scroll, and also provided interactive filing capabilities for documents and programs. Program documents could be converted to binary and run. Users could integrate their own programs with LAP6 using a link provided by the system, and swap the small LINC tapes around to share programs, an early "open source" capability.

The Computer Systems Laboratory's next project, also headed by Clark, was the design of "Macromodules," computer building blocks.[17] Wilkes designed the multiply macromodule, the most complex of the set.

Law career

Wilkes left the computer field in 1972 to attend the Harvard Law School. She practiced as a trial lawyer for many years, both in private practice and as head of the Economic Crime and Consumer Protection Division of the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office in Massachusetts. She taught in the Trial Advocacy Program at the Harvard Law School, 1983-2011, and sat as a judge for the school''s first- and second-year Ames (moot court) competition for 18 years. In 2001 she became an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association, sitting primarily on cases involving computer science and information technology. From 2005 through 2012 she served as a judge of the Annual Willem C. VIS International Commercial Arbitration Moot competition in Vienna, Austria, organized by Pace University Law School.

Notability

She is noted in the field of Computer Science for:

Quotes

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ "Computer Pioneer Award • IEEE Computer Society" to Wesley A.. Clark for the "First Personal Computer," 1981, www.computer.org. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  2. ↑ "How the Computer became Personal," John Markoff, NY Times, Aug. 19, 2001
  3. ↑ Clark, Wesley A., "The LINC was Early and Small," Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery: History of the Personal Computer, Jan. 9-10, 1986, pp. 133-155. ACM-0-89791-176-8-1/86-0133.
  4. ↑ Bell, C. Gordon, J. Craig Mudge, and John E. McNamara, Computer Engineering, Digital Press, 1978, p. 175.
  5. ↑ Ornstein, Severo, Computing in the Middle Ages, AUTHORHOUSE, 2002, p. 106. ISBN 9781403315175
  6. ↑ 10th "Vintage Computer Festival Archived 2011-07-28 at the Wayback Machine.". www.vintage.org. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  7. ↑ "Mary Allen Wilkes Lawyer Profile - martindale.com". www.martindale.com. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  8. 1 2 Interview with Mary Allen Wilkes at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival, Nov. 4, 2007, Mountain View, CA. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  9. ↑ LINC Control Console, Washington Univ. Computer Systems Laboratory LINC Document No. 2, July 23, 1963.
  10. ↑ Rosenfeld, S.A ., Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC): The Genesis of a Technological Revolution. In the proceedings of the Seminar in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the LINC Computer. NIH Rept., Office of NIH History, November 30, 1983, p. 4. history.nih.gov. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  11. ↑ Programming the LINC, Washington Univ. Computer Systems Laboratory, 2nd ed., January 1969, with W. A. Clark.
  12. ↑ Rosenfield, op. cit., p. 5.
  13. ↑ Ornstein, Severo and Bruce Damer, The LINC @ 45: A Paradigm Shift in 1962, 2008. www.digibarn.com. Retrieved 2015-07-28.
  14. 1 2 Wilkes, Mary Allen, 10th Vintage Computer Festival Panel Presentation, Mountain View, CA, Nov. 5, 2007, minutes 28-.40. Retrieved 2015-07-28.
  15. ↑ Wilkes, Mary Allen, LAP6 Use of the Stucki-Ornstein Text Editing Algorithm, Washington Univ. Computer Systems Laboratory Tech. Rept. No. 18, February, 1970.
  16. ↑ Denes, P. B., and M. V. Matthews, "Laboratory Computers: Their capabilities and how to make them work for you," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 58, no. 4, Apr. 1970, pp. 520-530, at 522.
  17. ↑ Clark, W.A., et al., Macromodular Computer Systems (seven papers), AFIPS Spring Joint Computing Conference 1967, 335-401. Retrieved 2015-7-28.
  18. ↑ Wilkes's father to countless friends and acquaintances in 1965. (See Interview with Mary Allen Wilkes at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival, Nov. 4, 2007, at footnote 8,)
  19. ↑ Preface, LAP6 Handbook.
  20. ↑ LAP6 Handbook, quoting Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments,
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