Oral history interview with James T. Pendergrass

Abstract

Pendergrass discusses his work in the Navy and the early use of computers there. He discusses his decoding and production work during the second world war, particularly on the Enigma project in which he used IBM, Kodak, and NCR equipment. After the war Pendergrass remained in the Navy and worked with Rear Admiral Leonard Winger and others in the Naval Security Group. Pendergrass reviews his computer training in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania Moore School for Electrical Engineering and his subsequent work for the Navy with Engineering Research Associates, the Institute for Advanced Study, and IBM. He concludes with a discussion of his Navy work on the Atlas project and advances in computer technology in the late 1940s and early 1950s.