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1944 |
2000 |
2002 with New Toyota Prius Gas-Electric Hybrid |
Address: 34 Bogey Circle Doylestown PA 18901 Phone:215-491-0869
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1944 |
2000 |
2002 with New Toyota Prius Gas-Electric Hybrid |
Address: 34 Bogey Circle Doylestown PA 18901 Phone:215-491-0869
After ASTP, Joe Dubois and I were sent to the Engineers at beautiful Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, where we were
magically transformed into diesel mechanics. In April '45 we were shipped to France; when Hitler heard of this,
he shot himself. In June we were shipped to the Phillipines; the Japanese then realized that further resistance
was hopeless.
I got my BSEE at Iowa in '47 and MSEE in '48. Then I did graduate work in physics at Harvard for two years. They
were the first university with a computer, the Harvard Mark I, and this was a lot more interesting than quantum
mechanics.
In 1950 I started as a programmer with Eckert-Mauchly, later acquired by Remington Rand, as a programmer for UNIVAC.
In1959 five of us founded Applied Data Research (ADR), the first independent software company. I was in software
development until I retired in 1991, and loved every minute of it.
In the early 1950s I wrote some of the first business application programs. I cleverly saved two bytes by using
two digits, rather than four, for the year in dates. This eventually led to the Y2K problem, which is generating
hundreds of billion dollars in economic activity and providing gainful employment for many thousands of my fellow
programmers. But I don't expect to win the Nobel Prize for this; I just hope I can avoid being lynched after the
New Year.
Some of my other professional experiences:
In 1952 I was the head programmer for the first televised presidential projection. We managed to predict Eisenhower over Stevenson, to my chagrin. Therafter I worked on all presidential and congressional projections through 1964.
I worked on the first COBOL compiler in 1960 and later served on the committee that developed COBOL improvements. I also developed a number of other computer languages.
I travelled widely giving seminars in UK, Switzerland, Finland, Russia and Bulgaria.
Personal History
I got married in 1967 (at age 43) and lived most of our married life, 21 happy years, in the then rural area near New Hope PA. We had no children so we adopted half of the abundant wildlife around us (we lived within walking distance of the SPCA where people discreetly abandoned their pets). At one time we had a menagerie of 3 dogs, 5 inside cats, and 4 outside cats, as well as 15 birdfeeders.
My wife died in an automobile accident in 1988. Not long after, I moved to a townhouse in Doylestown PA, where
I live with the last surviving cat. Apart from the usual wear & tear, I am in excellent health.
This was written on an obsolete Gateway computer (almost a year old) . I had very good luck with all the Gateways
I had. With a Kodak DC260 digital camera, a good scanner and a photo printer I am having a great time in my virtual
dark room, editing photos and building various Web pages. I still do a little programming. I serve on several Compuserve
Forums as an archivist, saving all messages and periodically uploading them to the forum library.
I do a lot of reading, some travelling and play bridge and poker weekly.
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Tales of the Internet 1. My mother-in-law, a wonderful woman, is in frail health and could no longer care for Miles, her Shetland Collie (Sheltie), a miniature collie. I searched the internet and found that there are Sheltie Rescue groups in nearly every state. We registered Miles with the Pennsylvania group. Within three days a man in Florida found the listing. His mother in New Jersey had lost her collie recently. Two days later, Miles was on his way to his new home. Fadeout, violins, sunset ... happy ending. |
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