C. Gordon Bell, a true visionary in computing who helped design some of the first minicomputers in the 1960s, died on May 17 at the age of 89, according to a new report. New York Times Tuesday. Bell died of pneumonia in Coronado, Calif., the Times reported, citing an unnamed member of Bell’s family.
Bell attended MIT in the mid-1950s and went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation in 1960, where he began designing computers such as the PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer. relatively small Plasma 8 It was revolutionary when it was introduced in 1965 because computers at the time were expensive and huge, sometimes the size of an entire room.
In fact, the PDP-8 was one of the early computers used in the ARPANET, the forerunner of the modern Internet. First connected in 1969. As The Times noted, some have called Bell the “Frank Lloyd Wright of computing” because of his incredible vision for technology.
Bell worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for 23 years as vice president of research and development before leaving to co-found his own company. Encore Computer and Enthusiastic about computers. Bell joined the National Science Foundation in 1986 and provided consulting services to Microsoft in the early 1990s before joining the company as a senior researcher in 1995.
Born on August 19, 1934, in Kirksville, Missouri, Bell had health problems that kept him at home as a child and even made him bedridden much of the time by the age of 7. But Bale was a natural tinkerer, despite his failing health.
As The Times explains:
He spent the lockdown doing wiring, conducting chemistry experiments, and cutting jigsaw puzzles. After recovering, he spent countless hours in his father’s shop learning electrical repair. By the age of 12, he was working as a professional electrician, installing the first domestic dishwasher, repairing the motor, and dismantling the mechanism to rebuild it.
How farsighted was Bale? You may see headlines this week about Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence capabilities called recall, which attempts to capture everything you do on your computer, or you might hear about the latest artificial intelligence devices that promise to provide instant insights into what’s going on in your world. Bell is way ahead of the game, as evidenced by his appearance on the cover of Fast Company’s November 2006 issue.
Bell’s idea was called Bits and pieces of my lifewhich allows him to capture phone calls, message logs, emails, and all other messages in his life as an experiment to save his daily life.
Yes, that’s Bell with his head on a hard drive, and he was just a kid. Work at Microsoft. His idea is that soon you’ll be able to record everything that happens in front of you and take a picture every 60 seconds with a camera hanging around your neck. It was a crazy idea at the time, but nearly 20 years later it feels more normal here.
But that’s who Bale is. The computer pioneer always looked ten steps ahead and built that version of the world. Click to see more photos of Bell and what the PDP-8 looked like in its heyday before the personal computer revolution of the 1980s.
