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Fitzbillies ceases trading World-famous cake shop Fitzbillies, on Trumpington Street, is no longer trading. Established in the 1920s by the Mason brothers, Fitzbillies was renowned for the stickiness of its Chelsea buns – a recipe that was passed down from owner to owner for 90 years.
UPDATE LENT TERM
New Year Honours Six Cambridge academics have been recognised in the Queen’s New Year Honours list. Professor Mike Gregory received a knighthood for services to technology and Professor Caroline Humphrey is made a DBE for services to scholarship; Professors Barry Kemp and Ronald Laskey are made CBEs; Professors Christopher Lowe and Sheila Bird are made OBEs. Administrator Margaret Johnston is made an MBE.
EDSAC
Eminent architect Spencer de Grey CBE, is to take up a five-year visiting professorship at Cambridge. De Grey is a senior partner and head of design at the leading London architecture firm Foster and Partners and is also a Royal Academician. His current projects include the masterplan for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the National Portrait Gallery courtyard at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. As the Department’s first Visiting Professor of Design he will take part in a series of workshops and bring his international experience to bear on current design research issues through a number of special lectures.To download his lectures visit www.arct.cam.ac.uk. Spencer de Grey at Foster and Partners Richard Nicholson
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Pioneer computer to be rebuilt
A Pictures courtesy of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
working replica of EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), the first fully operational stored-program computer, is to be rebuilt in recognition of the pioneering computer scientists at the University of Cambridge who developed it. EDSAC was a general-purpose research tool built in the 1940s under the direction of the late Professor Sir
Professor Sir Maurice Wilkes
Maurice Wilkes, then Director of the Mathematical Laboratory. It ran its first program on 6 May 1949, when it calculated a table of squares. Professor Wilkes is now widely regarded as the father of British computing. His objective was to produce a practical and reliable computer using proven hardware and imaginative programming techniques. The original EDSAC had over 3000 electronic tubes for logic, mercuryfilled tubes for memory, data input via paper tape and output on a teleprinter. The computer could perform 650 instructions per second and was used for nine years until it was dismantled to make more space. By then it had been superseded by the faster, more reliable and much larger EDSAC 2.The replica will be housed at the National Museum of Computing at the UK’s former code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park. The project is expected to take three to four years.
EVENTS
Wordfest returns Wordfest, Cambridge’s biannual literary festival, returns in April with the best in intelligent debate, workshops and speakers. Taking place at venues all over Cambridge, Spring Wordfest will host more than 100 writers, ranging across contemporary literature, memoir, history, art, politics, travel, dramatic performance and poetry. Headline events include Dawn French talking about her first novel A Tiny Bit Marvellous, Ian McEwan and American writer Sam Harris discussing morality and religion and Roger McGough and Simon Armitage on poetry. They will be joined by artist Maggi Hambling discussing her career and her controversial Aldeburgh Scallop, Michael Frayn on his father, Celia Imrie on acting, PD James on crime, Arlene Phillips on the spectacle of dance and Colin Thubron on Tibet. Wordfest takes place 15–17 April; the box office opens on Friday 4 March. For more information, visit www.cambridgewordfest.co.uk. CAM 62 05