Edmund Berkeley

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Edmund Callis Berkeley , pseudonym Neil D. MacDonald (born February 22, 1909 , † March 7, 1988 ), was an American computer scientist who co-founded the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1947 . He was politically committed to preventing nuclear wars.

Life

Berkeley graduated from Harvard University in 1930 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and logic . From 1934 to 1948 he worked as an actuary with Prudential Insurance , suspended from service in the United States Navy during World War II .

Berkeley saw George Stibitz's computer at Bell Laboratories in 1939 and the Harvard Mark I in 1942 . Then in November 1946 he drafted a specification for a "Sequence Controlled Calculator for the Prudential", which led to the conclusion of a contract with Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1947 for the delivery of one of the first UNIVAC computers. In 1948 Berkeley left Prudential and became an independent IT consultant because the company forbade him from participating in projects aimed at avoiding nuclear war. Occasionally he wrote under the pseudonym "Neil D. MacDonald".

He became famous in 1949 with the publication of his book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think , in which he described the basics of computers, which he called "mechanical brains", "sequence-controlled calculators" and a few others Names occurred. He also gave a technical, but easy to understand description of the most famous computers of his time, including machines from MIT , Harvard, Moore School , Bell Laboratories and others.

In that book, Berkeley also sketched the first home computer , Simon . Construction plans for this were published in the years 1950 and 1951 in the magazine Radio Electronics . Simon worked with relays and could be built for about $ 600. The first working copy was built at Columbia University with the help of two PhD students.

Berkeley was the founder, publisher, and editor of Computers and Automation magazine , considered the first computer magazine. He also designed the Geniac and Brainiac (computers) game computers .

In 1958, Berkeley joined the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE).

Computer art

On the cover of Computer and Automation magazine , January 1963, Edmund Berkeley published a picture by Efraim Arazi from 1962 and referred to it as Computer Art . Berkeley coined the term Computer Art. This picture inspired him to organize the first Computer Art Contest in 1963 . The annual competition from 1963 to 1973 was an important event in the development of computer art / computer art. In this way, Edmund Berkeley became a pioneer in the field of computer art.

Fonts

  • Giant Brains, or Machines That Think (1949), Wiley & Sons
  • Computers: Their Operation and Applications (1956), New York: Reinhold Publishing
  • Symbolic Logic and Intelligent Machines (1959), New York: Reinhold Publishing
  • Probability and Statistics: An Introduction through Experiments (1961), Science Materials Center
  • The Computer Revolution (1962), Doubleday
  • The Computer Revolution , European Publishing House , 1966
  • The Programming Language LISP: Its Operation and Applications (1964)
  • A Guide to Mathematics for the Intelligent Nonmathematician (1966), Simon and Schuster
  • Computer-assisted Explanation: A Guide to Explaining: and some ways of using a computer to assist in clear explanation (1967), Information International
  • Ride the East Wind; Parables of Yesterday and Today (1973), Quadrangle, ISBN 0-81290375-7
  • The Computer Book of Lists and First Computer Almanack (1984), Reston Publishing, ISBN 0-83590864-X

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simon fact sheet published by Columbia University , last viewed April 10, 2007
  2. ^ Herbert W. Franke: Frontier areas of the visual arts, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart In: Catalog , 1972, p. 69.
  3. ↑ http://dada.compart-bremen.de/item/Publication/206
personal data
SURNAME Berkeley, Edmund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berkeley, Edmund Callis (full name); MacDonald, Neil D. (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1909
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1988