[N.P.]: Electronic Engineering 19, (April 1947). First edition. Original printed self-wrappers signed by Wilkes on the front. 6 pages, complete with text illustrations. A Fine copy of this rare and important work, which has never appeared at auction; OCLC reports no institutionally held copies worldwide. Provenance: the library of Maurice Wilkes.
Computer pioneer Maurice Wilkes's first paper on electronic computing, which was published in the aftermath of WWII, within the first year of his rise to leadership in the Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory. It was in this year that L. J. Comrie supplied Wilkes with a copy of John von Neumann’s report “summarizing the deliberations of the computer group at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania. The Moore School had just completed the ENIAC, the world’s first electronic computer for defense calculations…He at once recognized it as ‘the real thing’ and decided that the laboratory had to have one” (A. M. Turing Awards). Following attendance at a convention on ENIAC and the Moore’s followup EDVAC in 1947, Wilkes returned to the U.K. to begin work on a project of his own: EDSAC, which was completed in 1949 and became the world’s first practical stored program electronic computer. The present paper, Wilkes’ first on the subject, contains a brief and early description of the design and operation of ENIAC, and is "primarily concerned with the ENIAC as an interesting application of modern electronic technique.” A critical work in the history of computing, and a foundational text that launched Wilkes into the field.
Origins of Cyberspace 1015. Fine (Item #2585)