George Stibitz

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George Robert Stibitz (born April 20, 1904 in York , USA; † January 31, 1995 in Hanover ) was an American engineer and computer pioneer. He is internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the first modern digital computer . He worked as a researcher at Bell Labs and was best known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on digital circuits for representing Boolean functions ( Boolean logic ) using electromechanical relays as switching elements.

Life

Born in York, Pennsylvania, Stibitz received his bachelor's degree from Denison University in Granville, Ohio , his masters from Union College in 1927, and his Ph.D. in mathematical physics in 1930 from Cornell University .

computer

In November 1937 completed George Stibitz, then employees of Bell Labs , a relay-based calculator, which he called the "K" model, because of the " K üchentischs" on which he had composed them. The machine could add binary numbers. The Bell Labs then approved a proper research program under Stibitz's direction in late summer 1938. The resulting Complex Number Calculator , completed on January 8, 1940, was able to perform calculations with complex numbers . During a demonstration for the American Mathematical Society at their Dartmouth College conference on September 11, 1940, Stibitz used a teletype machine to send commands for the Complex Number Calculator in New York City over telephone lines. This was the first computer to be remotely controlled via a telephone line.

Stibitz held a further 38 patents in addition to those he registered for Bell Labs. Since 1964 he was a member of a research group at Dartmouth College, where he developed ideas for later using computer technology in medicine. From 1970 until his retirement in 1983 he was professor of physiology . Replicas of the K-Model exist in the Smithsonian Institution and the William Howard Doane Library at Denison University.

Of particular interest is the Stibitz code , a representation for BCD numbers that makes subtraction easier.

Honors

  • At the McNutt Hall of Dartmouth College in Hanover (NH, USA) a bronze plaque commemorates:
"In this building, on September 9, 1940, George Stibitz, then a mathematician at BELL TELEPHONE LABORATORIES, demonstrated the remote operation of an electrical digital computer for the first time. Stibitz, who designed the electrical digital computer at BELL LABS in 1937, described his invention of the "COMPLEX NUMBER CALCULATOR" at a meeting of the MATHEMATICAL ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, which took place here. Members of the audience sent problems to the computer of the BELL LABS in New York and received solutions within seconds, which were transferred from the computer to a telex in this hall were. "

Computer art

In his later years, Stibitz turned to the "non-verbal applications of the computer". In particular, he used an Amiga to create computer art. In a letter he wrote to the Dean of Mathematics and Computer Science at Denison University in 1990, he said:

I turned to non-verbal computer applications and produced an exhibition of computer "art". The quotation marks are necessary here because the result of my endeavors is not to make important art, but to show that it is fun, just like the creation of computers fifty years ago.

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Denison University exhibits some of his artwork.

See also

Patents

  • Patent US2668661 : Complex Computer. Registered April 1941 , published February 9, 1954 . ‌

literature

  • Melina Hill, Valley News Correspondent, A Tinkerer Gets a Place in History , Valley News West Lebanon NH, Thursday March 31, 1983, 13.
  • Andrew Hodges (1983), Alan Turing : The Enigma , Simon and Schuster, New York, ISBN 0-671-49207-1 . Stibitz is briefly mentioned on pages 299 and 326. Hodges calls Stibitz's machine one of two "large relay computers" (the other was Aiken's ).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Stibitz, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stibitz, George Robert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American engineer and computer pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH York , USA
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1995
Place of death Hanover