Mary Allen Wilkes
The First Home Computer User
The LINC operating system, written in her parents’ living room
Rating
85Impact score
Domains
Operating systemsPersonal computingInteractive systems
Scouting report
Wrote LAP6, the operating system for the LINC, one of the first interactive personal computers. In 1965 she took a LINC home and used it there, which makes her plausibly the first person to have a computer in their house. LAP6 supported real-time text editing on a machine with two kilowords of memory.
Curator’s note
Had a computer at home a decade before anyone was selling one.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Mary Allen Wilkes by unknown (work for hire), licensed CC0.
Sources
- 01Mary Allen Wilkes en.wikipedia.org
- 02LINC en.wikipedia.org