In the Time, Clocks paper, Lamport described systems in terms of state machines—entities with a state that processes commands in order, where each command changes state and produces a value—and recognized this was the most important idea in the paper, but it was completely ignored by readers.
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Leslie LamportEvidence Quote
“that part was completely ignored. As a matter of fact, twice I talked to people about that paper and they said there was nothing in that paper about state machines and I had to go back and reread and reread the paper to be sure I wasn't going crazy and it really did talk about state machines.”
Source
Turing Award Winner: Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working With Dijkstra | Leslie Lamport— Ryan PetermanCreated: 8/12/2026, 6:17:50 PM
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