FRS
1927–2004
Role: Worked on programming LEO’s initial orders and payroll
Responsibility: First tested the payroll program on EDSAC
While a student at Cambridge University volunteering on EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), David Wheeler was seconded to J. Lyons & Co. to work on programming for business computing, prior to the completion of the LEO hardware.
Wheeler tested the payroll program on EDSAC (without much success) and went on to publish ‘The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer’ with Maurice Wilkes and Stanley Gill, and is internationally recognised as the world’s first textbook on programming in 1951, going on to drive innovation in data compression, encryption and security.
Biographies – University of Cambridge, The Independent, The Centre of Computing History