When EDSAC was built, Wilkes sought to allay public fears by describing the stored-program computer as “a calculating machine operated by a moron who cannot think, but can be trusted to do what he is told”. In 1964, however, predicting the world in “1984”, he drew a more Orwellian picture: “How would you feel,” he wrote, “if you had exceeded the speed limit on a deserted road in the dead of night, and a few days later received a demand for a fine that had been automatically printed by a computer coupled to a radar system and vehicle identification device? It might not be a demand at all, but simply a statement that your bank account had been debited automatically.”