Browsing by Subject "Computer science -- United States -- History."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Oral history interview with Edsger W. Dijkstra
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2001-08-02) Dijkstra, Edsger Wybe
    In this oral history Edsger Dijkstra recounts his early education and training as a theoretical physicist and as a 'programmer'. Dijkstra describes his work developing software, and his activities at several early information processing conferences. Dijkstra also discourses on the development of ALGOL 60 and the origins of computing science in Europe and America.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Oral history interview with Gene H. Golub
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 1979-06-08) Golub, Gene H. (Gene Howard), 1922-
    Golub discusses the construction of the ILLIAC computer, the work of Ralph Meager and David Wheeler on the ILLIAC design, British computer science, programming, and the early users of the ILLIAC at the University of Illinois.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Oral History Interview with Jim Gray
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-01-03) Gray, Jim, 1944-
    Gray discusses his childhood in Rome and education at the University of California, Berkeley. He explains the influence of Sputnik, Norbert Wiener’s view of cybernetics and society, the social impact of computing, and the artificial intelligence papers of Newell and Simon in the shaping of his career. Gray describes his co-op position at General Dynamics, as well as positions with Bell Labs (Murray Hill) and IBM Research in Yorktown Heights and San Jose. Gray also describes his evaluations of computer models stimulated by the system dynamics approach pioneered by Jay Forrester, his brief role as a UNESCO technical expert in Romania, and his introduction to relational database design. The interview includes comments on computer privacy and research laboratory culture at International Business Machines, Tandem Computers, and Microsoft.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Oral history interview with Laszlo A. Belady
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-11-21) Belady, L. A. (Laszlo A.), 1928-
    Belady discusses his early life and education in Hungary, escape to West Germany during the 1956 revolution, and work as a draftsman at Ford Motor Company in Cologne and as an aerodynamics engineer at Dassault in Paris. Belady covers his 1961 immigration into the United States, where he joined International Business Machines and did early work in operating systems, virtual machine architectures, program behavior modeling, memory management, computer graphics, Asian character sets, and data security. He also discusses his tenure as Vice President and Program Director of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC); as Chairman, CTO, and CEO of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (MERL); and as Executive Director of the Austin Software Council.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Oral history interview with Stephen Cook
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-10-18) Cook, Stephen Arthur.
    Cook recounts his early interest in electronics and association with electronic cardiac pacemaker inventor Wilson Greatbatch, and his education at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. He describes his first position as an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and his growing interest in problems of computational complexity preceding an influential 1971 presentation on “The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures” at the ACM SIGACT Symposium on the Theory of Computing. Cook discusses his move to the University of Toronto in 1970 and the reception of his work on NP-completeness, leading up to his A.M. Turing Award for “contributions to the theory of computational complexity, including the concept of nondeterministic, polynomial-time completeness.” He also discusses the feasibility of solving the P versus NP Problem.