Oral history interview with Walter Leonard Anderson

Abstract

Anderson, who had been trained by the Navy at MIT and at the University of Minnesota, began working for ERA in 1946. He was hired by Joseph Walsh and worked with Howard Daniels, Frank Mullaney, and George Hardenbergh on engineering design problems. Anderson talks about a number of early design projects at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, including design of a relay control circuit and a time delay scramble. He discusses the influence that Arnold Cohen had on him. In 1949 Anderson moved to the Arlington office where he worked until 1955. He worked with the sales office as a technical liaison under Herbert H. Goodman. He worked on development of UNIVAC and the 1100 series, and he discusses some of the applications that he was involved in assessing and the technological constraints of the time. Anderson was also a liaison between the Minnesota group and the Pennsylvania group, and he discusses projects in which he worked with John Coombs, William Norris, William Overn, William Butler, Robert Torrey, Ted Bonn, and Herb Rickards. He discusses the change in operations when ERA was changed from a subsidiary to a division of Remington Rand. Anderson also discusses the establishment of General Kinetics, Inc. with Robert Gutterman, Al Roberts, Frank McKutcheon, and William Goggins. The interview concludes with remarks on the nature of their early consulting work in mathematics, engineering, and the film industry.