Browsing by Subject "General Electric Company"
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Item Oral history interview with Arnold Spielberg(Charles Babbage Institute, 1987-06-23) Spielberg, ArnoldSpielberg, an electronics engineer and manager in Product Technology Operations for Unisys, discusses product development in the computer industry. He describes his work with RCA and General Electric Computer Dept. in the 1950s; IBM, Scientific Data Systems, and Electronic Arrays in the 1960s; and his work with Burroughs (and later Unisys) after 1973. Subjects discussed include: point-of-sale equipment; product development and marketing; GE 225; IBM computers; Burroughs computers; Scientific Data System's SIGMA series; and GP2000 (a cooperative graphics product of Burroughs and Superset).Item Oral history interview with Carl Rench(Charles Babbage Institute, 1984-04-18) Rench, Carl F.Rench, an NCR employee since l946, surveys the company's growth from a manufacturer of cash registers to one of the largest suppliers of business computers. He begins with NCR's l946 experiments with vacuum tube arithmetic devices, work during the Korean war on the A-1-A bombing navigational system, and the acquisition in 1952 of the Computer Research Corporation. Rench points to Joseph Desch's role in moving NCR into electronics. Rench highlights the major products of the l950s: the Post-Tronic machine for reading magnetic strips on ledger cards and doing financial transactions, and the Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) device. He mentions a l959 joint venture with General Electric to produce one of the first all-transistorized business computers. He explains how, in the 1960s, NCR returned to its earlier specialty in peripheral devices, and contrasts this approach with IBM's concentration on the sale of systems. Rench focuses on the company in the early 1970s as a major producer of metal oxide semicon- ductor chips and as a multinational corporation. He discusses at length NCR president William Anderson's decentralization of the company, the resistance among Dayton employees, and the advantages of this policy to the company's livelihood.Item Oral history interview with Fernando J. Corbató(Charles Babbage Institute, 1990-11-14) Corbató, F. J.Corbató discusses computer science research, especially time-sharing, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Topics in the first session include: Phil Morse and the establishment of the Computation Center, Corbató's management of the Computation Center, the development of the WHIRLWIND computer, John McCarthy and research on time-sharing, cooperation between International Business Machines (IBM) and MIT, and J. C. R. Licklider and the development of Project MAC. Topics in the second session include: time-sharing, the development of MULTICS by the General Electric (GE) Computer Division, IBM's reaction to MIT working with GE, the development of CTSS, the development of UNIX in cooperation with Bell Labs, interaction with the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, interaction with Honeywell after they purchased GE's Computer Division, and the transformation of Project MAC into the Laboratory for Computer Science.Item Oral history interview with Frank C. Mullaney(Charles Babbage Institute, 1986-06) Mullaney, Frank C.Mullaney begins by describing his early life, electrical engineering education, radar work in World War II with General Electric, and sonar work with the Navy. He discusses the various projects to which he was assigned at Engineering Research Associates (ERA), especially the Atlas (ERA 1101) computer. Other topics include the ERA 1102 and ERA 1103 computers, John L. Hill, the acquisition of ERA by Remington Rand, J. Presper Eckert, and the formation of Control Data Corporation.Item Oral history interview with Jack Bonnell Dennis(Charles Babbage Institute, 1989-10-31) Dennis, Jack B. (Jack Bonnell); O'Neill, Judy E.Dennis describes his educational background and work in time-sharing computer systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The interview focuses on time-sharing. Dennis discusses the TX0 computer at MIT, the work of John McCarthy on time-sharing, and the influence of the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (later the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) on the development of time-sharing. Dennis also recalls the competition between various firms, including Digital Equipment Corporation, General Electric, Burroughs, and International Business Machines, to manufacture time-sharing systems. He describes the development of MULTICS at General Electric.Item Oral history interview with Richard M. Bloch(Charles Babbage Institute, 1984-02-22) Bloch, Richard M. (Richard Milton)This interview describes Bloch's work at the Harvard Computation Laboratory and his subsequent career in computing. Bloch begins with his early life through his undergraduate degree in mathematics at Harvard. He entered the Navy in 1943 and recounts how he first met Howard Aiken while giving him a tour of the Naval Research Laboratory. Aiken had him transferred back to Harvard just as the Mark I was being shipped from IBM, where Bloch was involved with programming and maintenance of the machine. He describes the architecture and operation of the Mark I, including a discussion of the improvements made after the machine arrived at Harvard. He also discusses a number of the problems solved on Mark I, including one for von Neumann on spherical shock waves in an atomic implosion. He also describes Aiken's personality and attitude toward computer commercialization. In 1947 Bloch left Harvard for Raytheon, eventually heading their computer division. He discusses the government RAYDAC and commercial RAYCOM computers, as well as his own contributions to the development of parity checking. Raytheon sold its computer division to Honeywell in 1955, and Bloch became director of computer product development there. He describes the 200, 400, and 800 series of Honeywell computers, the development of an error detection machine which he claims opened the field of fault tolerant computing, and competition in this period between IBM and Honeywell. In 1968 Bloch joined General Electric as division general manager to develop large computer systems to compete with IBM. When GE left the computer field, Bloch moved into private work on venture capital, acquisition-divestiture, and high-level corporate consulting in the computer industry. He recounts how he became chief executive officer of Artificial Intelligence Corporation, a company developing a product to use natural English to query databases.Item Oral history interview with Richard Vincent(Charles Babbage Institute, 1983-03-08) Vincent, Richard, 1930-Vincent reviews his involvement with computing from 1949 to the early 1970s. He relates how he first learned about computers in Air Force punch card operator school and ran IBM punched card machines during the Korean War. Vincent joined International Harvester after the war, operating an IBM 602A and later one of the first IBM 705 computers. He discusses the problems with the 705 and the field support offered by IBM. In 1959 Vincent joined Montgomery Ward, where he operated an early drum computer, the IBM 650. Vincent describes the difficulties of operating a drum computer. In 1961 Vincent joined Pillsbury, where he converted the company from an IBM punched card system to a General Electric 225 computer. He describes subsequent computer acquisitions at Pillsbury, including the 1965 acquisition of a GE 625, one of the early multi-processing computers. In 1969 Vincent joined Standard Computer Corporation, founded by engineers from the Call-A-Computer Division of Pillsbury, where he worked with Lazlo Rocozi on an IBM 7090 take-off, the IC 7000. In 1971 Vincent returned to Pillsbury and programmed the GE 635 in Cobol. Vincent discusses the problems of integrating different computer systems both within Pillsbury and with other companies. He concludes by discussing why Pillsbury uses GE (now Honeywell) instead of IBM computers.Item Oral history interview with Robert Serrell(Charles Babbage Institute, 1982-04-05) Serrell, RobertThe interview is devoted to discussion of the SCRIBE computer system developed by Serrell for the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the late 1950s to process multiple choice tests. Serrell explains how he became involved with the project. He reviews the technical specifications, operation, capabilities, and modifications of the optical scanner used in SCRIBE. He compares his work on SCRIBE to his work on other projects: the design of facsimile machinery to transmit photographs by radio at General Electric (GE) in the late 1920s, Navy contract work on computers at GE in the 1930s, and television development at Radio Corporation of America and Columbia Broadcasting System in the 1930s. Serrell also describes his work on the Teaching Machine, which was built for ETS in the 1960s, and speculates on possible future applications of technology to education.Item Oral history interview with Thomas H. Maguire(Charles Babbage Institute, 1984-02-27) Maguire, Thomas H. (Tim)This interview concerns computer activities of General Electric (GE) and the data communications industry. After describing his early life through his undergraduate work in mechanical engineering at the University of Washington, Maguire concentrates on his career at GE. He worked for GE's utility sales divisions in Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin, in the programming department at Phoenix, and as a support specialist to the utilities industry in the Philadelphia field office. Maguire describes the training program for new engineers, the divisional structure of the company, the sales and management philosophy, and the marketing plan, and illustrates them from his personal experiences. He devotes particular attention to GE's attempt to gain the number two market share in the computer industry and the decision to leave the industry because of their capital commitments to steam turbine and nuclear power technologies. He then reviews his career with GE, first as manager with the communications system start-up Communatype and later with his own company in the data communications system business. He provides an overview of the technical innovations, price-performance improvements, and companies that entered the data communications industry.Item Oral history interview with Thomas Van Vleck(Charles Babbage Institute, 2012-10-24) Van Vleck, ThomasThomas Van Vleck is a time-sharing and computer security pioneer. As a user he worked with MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) and MULTICS as a MIT student prior to helping to design enhancements (including security enhancements) to the MULTICS system first as a technical staff member at MIT and later on Honeywell-MULTICS as a technical staff member and manager at Honeywell. The interview discusses the security issues/risks on CTSS that resulted in modest changes (password protection) to CTSS and influenced the far more extensive security design elements of MULTICS. His long association w/ MULTICS in both the MIT and Honeywell setting provides unique perspective on the evolution of MULTICS security over the long term. He also briefly discusses his post-Honeywell career working on computer security as a manager at several other firms. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1116862, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.”Item UNIVAC conference(Charles Babbage Institute, 1990-05) Woltman, Richard D.; Woltman, Frances B.; Wilson, Louis D.; Tonik, Albert B.; Swearingen, John K.; Shuler, Cecil M.; Sberro, Joseph E.; Sammet, Jean E., 1928-; Matter, H. W.; Marquardt, Donald W.; Koons, Florence K.; Huff, Morgan W.; Holberton, Frances E.; Hammer, Carl, 1914-2004; Dixon, Donald B.; Delves, Eugene L.; Danehower, George; Chinitz, M. Paul; Carter, Lee S.; Bartik, Jean; Armstrong, Lancelot W.; Armstrong, Dorothy P.; Adams, Armand E.The introduction of the UNIVAC computer is among those subjects in the history of computing that has received wide attention. The issues and sequence of events leading to the development of the UNIVAC have been covered in such writings as Nancy Stern's "From ENIAC to UNIVAC" and Herman Lukoff's "From Dits to Bits," and was the subject of the 1981 AFIPS Pioneer Day. However, less attention has been devoted to the place of the UNIVAC from approximately 1952 to 1956, after its initial development. A two-day oral history conference was convened in May 1990 to examine the role and effect of the UNIVAC on computing and the computer industry in the mid-1950s. The meeting involved over twenty-five engineers, programmers, marketing representatives, and salesmen who were involved with the UNIVAC, as well as customers who had worked with the machine. Many of these persons were key to the development and use of the computer, although this was the first time that most had been part of the historical analysis of the UNIVAC. Of particular note was the attendance of individuals from General Electric and Arthur Andersen. Both firms were early purchasers of the UNIVAC and had an important influence on the sale of UNIVACs to other businesses. Also represented in the group was the U.S. Census, which purchased the first UNIVAC from Remington Rand. The conference was organized and supported by the Unisys Corporation in concert with the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) and the Smithsonian Institution. Anne Frantilla, corporate archivist for Unisys, was responsible for developing the conference and bringing together the participants. The Smithsonian hosted and recorded the conference. CBI undertook the production of this transcript, and has added the audio tape(s)s to its oral history collection. Editing of this transcript has been minimal. The text was altered only when an exact transcript of the spoken word did not adequately convey the intended meaning. More substantive changes and editorial remarks are enclosed in square brackets ([ ]). Also note that "UNIVAC" (all caps) conveys the computer, and "Univac" generally means the Univac Division of Remington Rand, later Sperry Rand. The editing of this transcript is unlike other oral interviews conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute in that participants were not given a chance to review their comments. The number of participants simply made CBI's standard practice infeasible. However, John Swearingen and Frances and Richard Woltman graciously agreed to review the transcript, and most of their recommendations were incorporated in the final transcript. Bruce Bruemmer edited the transcript. Participants include: Armand E. Adams, Dorothy P. Armstrong, Lancelot W. Armstrong, Jean Bartik, Lee S. Carter, M. Paul Chinitz, George Danehower, Eugene L. Delves, Donald B. Dixon, Carl Hammer, Frances Elizabeth Holberton, Morgan W. Huff, Florence K. Koons, Donald W. Marquardt, H. W. Matter, Jean E. Sammet, Joseph E. Sberro, Cecil M. Shuler, John K. Swearingen, Albert Tonik, Louis D. Wilson, Frances B. Woltman, Richard D. Woltman. Moderators include: Paul Ceruzzi, Bernard A. Galler, Michael S. Mahoney, Arthur L. Norberg, Robert F. Rosin, and Henry S. Tropp.