Information & Computer Engineering - History

In 1812 Charles Babbage, while an undergraduate at Cambridge, had his first ideas for a calculating machine and later started work on his 'difference engine', which he never completed but which heralded later inventions leading to the modern computer.

Historical links between Cambridge University and the birth of computer sciences continued through the appointment of Maurice Vincent Wilkes as Director of the Cambridge Computer Laboratory, where he was responsible for the development of stored program computers starting with EDSAC. He was also the inventor of labels, macros and microprogramming, and with David Wheeler and Stanley Gill, the inventor of a programming system based on subroutines. He is still based in the city of Cambridge.

More recently, Andy Hopper, formerly Professor of Communications Engineering at the Department and now Head of the Computer Laboratory, has become a well-known personality through his personal success in the field of wealth creating, high technology spin-off companies for which Cambridge has become a centre.

Hopper's PhD was on a local area communications network, and he developed a system known as the Cambridge Ring, which was a serious contender to the Ethernet. Technology developed as a result of this research led to the development of the BBC microcomputers by Acorn, a company founded jointly with Herman Hauser in the 1970s. This was to become the most successful UK company in terms of personal wealth creation.