The Inaugural John Pinkerton Lecture will be held at the IEE on 5th December
2000. It will be given by Professor Sir Maurice Wilkes

The John Pinkerton Inaugural Lecture 

"No corporate goal can ever succeed if it cannot also provide the
ambitious individual with the challenges of extraordinary difficulty
and the promise of self-fulfilment_ nothing had so much meaning,
relevance and truth as the set of values I saw in the early LEO days" 

(Leo Fantl, a member of the LEO team) 

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The transition from innovation to application is not always
successfully made. An outstanding example of such a success was the
development of LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) - the world's first
computer designed for business applications. 

In commemoration and honour of John Pinkerton, the pivotal engineer in
this development, the IEE is inaugurating this annual lecture. Arising
from a vision within 

J Lyons, the catering company, for a radical improvement in its
business operations, the LEO project started in 1949 and the system
was brought into use in 1951. In this remarkably short time he and his
small team turned the EDSAC, developed at the University of Cambridge,
into a practical tool for business computing. The result transformed
not only Lyons' administration, but by its example, that of many other
organisations. 

By 1955, Lyons had created the subsidiary company, LEO Computers Ltd,
to manufacture and sell computers and included, amongst its first
customers, the Ford Motor Company. The Pinkerton team went on to
produce the commercially successful LEO range - fully engineered and
enhanced with new ideas and technologies. 

This was innovation driven by user need and guided by a remarkable
man, who was able to inspire others - to which Leo Fantl's quote is
admirable testimony. Crucially, Pinkerton recognised the importance of
understanding how users operate and was able to work with them to
achieve shared aims. As he said "_ the simpler the conception and the
design of any item of calculating equipment, the better it will be
understood by the operators who use it and the engineers who maintain
it." 

We are delighted to announce that Sir Maurice Wilkes has kindly agreed
to provide the inaugural address in the series. Sir Maurice was one of
the early pioneers of computing in post-war Britain, and it was he
who, as head of the Computer Laboratory at the University of
Cambridge, developed the EDSAC computer on which the first LEO was
based. It is fitting that Wilkes, who recommended John Pinkerton when
Lyons were looking for a chief engineer, should provide this first,
commemorative lecture. In his talk, Sir Maurice will provide a sketch
of the way computer engineering developed and will attempt to put the
LEO project and Pinkerton's work into perspective against this
background. 

Subsequent lectures in the series will take a perspective based on
computer engineering but broad enough to invoke parallels from
elsewhere, and will explore the steps along the path from innovation
to application. Each lecture will aim to identify the processes
involved in such a transition, analyse their ingredients and determine
how they can be replicated. 

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Professor Sir Maurice V Wilkes KB FRS FREng was for many years head of
the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. Since 1980 he
has worked in industry and is now Staff Consultant at the AT&T
Research Laboratories in Cambridge, England. 

He served on the IEE Council from 1973 to 1976 and received the IEE
Faraday Medal in 1981. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow
of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Distinguished Fellow of the
British Computer Society. He is a Foreign Associate of both the US
National Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of
Engineering. He delivered the ACM Turing Lecture in 1967 and was the
recipient of the 1992 Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology. 

Wilkes has written a number of books, including Memoirs of a Computer
Pioneer (MIT Press, 1985) and Computing Perspectives (Morgan-Kaufmann,
1995). 

Venue and Date
The lecture will be presented at the IEE, Savoy Place, London WC2R
0BL, on Tuesday, 05 December 2000 at 6.00 pm (tea at 5.30). 

Admission
Admission to the lecture is free of charge and everyone is welcome.
Pre-registration is not necessary. Following the lecture there will be
a dinner - please contact Vicki Gallagher for further details (see 
below). 


Details are available at the IEE website at:

http://www.iee.org.uk/Events/a05dec00.htm

Vicki Gallagher
Events Executive
Tel: +44 (0)20 7344 5478
Fax: +44 (0)20 7240 8830
Email: [log in to unmask]



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