Howard H. Aiken? Kenneth E. Iverson? Gregory W. Welch? Robert Slater? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A cynical comment about innovation states that it is not necessary to fear the theft of your ideas because people obstinately resist imaginative ideas. If your idea is original, you will have to ram it down people’s throats. This notion has been attributed to Howard H. Aiken who was the main designer of IBM’s Harvard Mark I, the first programmable computer in the U.S. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The Spring 1985 issue of “The Computer Museum Report” of Boston, Massachusetts contained an article titled “Howard Hathaway Aiken: The Life of a Computer Pioneer” by Gregory W. Welch which included a version of the quotation:1
… a comment that Aiken made to a student once betrays the attitude which earned him the enmity of some, and caused him to become disillusioned in later years: “Don’t worry about people stealing your idea,” he said. “If it’s original you will have to ram it down their throats.” This attitude represented what his critics claimed was Aiken’s condescending and superior air.
The footnote accompanying the quotation named “Iverson” as the source. This corresponded to computer scientist Kenneth E. Iverson who was Aiken’s student. The notes of the article listed the following document by Iverson which QI has not examined:
Kenneth E. Iverson, “Howard Aiken, Friend and Mentor,” April, 1973, Aiken Files, Folder: “Harry Mimno,” AOF.
The initialism AOF referred to the following archive:
AOF—Active files of Dr. Anthony Oettinger, Chairman, Program on Information Resources Policy, Harvard University, Aiken Computation Laboratories, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Aiken died in March 1973. Hence, the document above was created by Iverson in the month after Aiken’s death. QI believes that the quotation is probably in this 1973 document. Alternatively, Gregory W. Welch heard the quotation directly from Iverson who credited Aiken.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1987 Robert Slater published “Portraits in Silicon” which included a chapter titled “Howard Aiken: Builder of the First American Electronic Brain” which contained the following passage:2
Once a student approached him with the concern that someone might steal his (the student’s) ideas before the publication of his thesis. “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea,” replied Aiken. “If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”
In 1997 the book “Wizards and Their Wonders: Portraits in Computing” by Christopher Morgan included a portrait of Aiken together with a biographical paragraph and the following version of the quotation using the word “jam” instead of “ram”:3
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you’ll have to jam it down their throats.”
In 1998 Carl J. Schneider and Dorothy Schneider published the short biographical work “Grace Murray Hopper: Working to Create the Future” which included the following:4
Grace, like her Harvard boss, Howard Aiken, knew how hard it is to get people to think in new ways. Aiken always said not to worry about people stealing your ideas. “If it’s original,” he said, “you will have to ram it down their throats.”
In 2003 “The Big Book of Business Quotations” included the following entry:5
Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
Howard Aiken (1900-73) U.S. computer engineer and mathematician. Quoted in Portraits in Silicon (Robert Slater; 1987)
In 2014 Walter Isaacson published “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution” which attributed the quotation to Aiken:6
Aiken was similarly open about sharing ideas. “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea,” he once told a student. “If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”
In conclusion, there is substantive evidence that Howard H. Aiken deserves credit for this quotation based on the 1985 citation. Aiken’s student Kenneth E. Iverson ascribed this quotation to Aiken according to computer history researcher Gregory W. Welch.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
Image Notes: Picture of painting implements representing creativity. Picture from Tim Arterbury at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
- 1985 Spring, The Computer Museum Report, Volume 12, Howard Hathaway Aiken: The Life of a Computer Pioneer by Gregory W. Welch, Start Page 3, Quote Page 11, Column 2, The Computer Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. Note: The word “enmity” was misspelled as “enmity” in the original text. (Verified with scans from tcm.computerhistory.org) link ↩︎
- 1987 Copyright, Portraits in Silicon by Robert Slater, Chapter: Howard Aiken: Builder of the First American Electronic Brain, Quote Page 88, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1997 Copyright, Wizards and Their Wonders: Portraits in Computing by Christopher Morgan, Part: Forerunners, Chapter: Howard Aiken, Quote Page 5, The Computer Museum, Marlborough, Massachusetts; ACM Press, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1998 Copyright, Grace Murray Hopper: Working to Create the Future by Carl J. Schneider and Dorothy Schneider, Series: Lives Worth Living, Chapter 6: Amazing Grace, Section: Points to Ponder, Quote Page 57, SofWest Press, Las Cruces, New Mexico. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2003, The Big Book of Business Quotations, Topic: Ideas, Quote Page 195, Column 1, Basic Books: A Member of the Perseus Books Group, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2014, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson, Chapter 3: Programming, Quote Page 105, Simon & Schuster, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎