langreiter.com plain, simple: Howard Aiken

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Howard Aiken

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 6751 days AGO

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

— Howard Aiken, here

"He was a forceful person. He stood about six foot three with slanted eyebrows and Spockian ears. When he was mad and glaring down at you, you felt like you might be seeing the devil incarnate. He was usually extremely encouraging. He came to the office every day during the thesis writing period, wanting to read the prose that had been generated since the day before. That's one reason I and some of the other students [among them Ken Iverson, chl] got through the Ph.D. program in three years."— Fred Brooks, quoted in Dennis Shasha's book Out of Their Minds.

"Aiken was much influenced in his ideas by [[create Charles Babbage]]'s writings and he saw the project to build the [create ASCC] computer as completing the task which Babbage had set out on but failed to complete."