Harvey Cragon

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Harvey G. Cragon (born April 21, 1929 in Ruston , Louisiana - † September 7, 2018 in Shreveport , Louisiana) was an American computer engineer at Texas Instruments .

Training and time before TI

Cragon graduated from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston with a degree in electrical engineering in 1950, then worked for a telephone company in New Orleans and spent two years in the Army during the Korean War in a tank unit that tested infrared night vision devices in the Mojave Desert . In 1953/54 he came to Hughes Aircraft in the Los Angeles area , where he worked on automated air defense, which was his entry into the field of digital computers (he took some courses on it at UCLA ). In 1957 he went to Tennessee , where he worked as an engineer in the digital instrumentation of a wind tunnel ( Arnold Engineering Development Center of the Air Force in Tullahoma , with UNIVAC-1102 computers specially designed for them).

First computer with ICs at TI

After two years, he moved to Texas Instruments (TI) in Dallas in 1959 , which also switched to digital technology and built signal processors for seismic data (which were still programmed using breadboards). There he built the first digital computer with ICs , which came directly from Jack Kilby , for the Air Force (1961) and similar digital computing units for measuring instruments on missiles (for James Van Allen 1963/64) and the military. At that time, however, the use of ICs still encountered resistance, especially from the circuit designers.

ASC and after

The breakthrough at TI came with the demonstration of the advantages of the newly developed TTL in a signal processor for seismic data (TI-870) in the mid-1960s and the construction of the successor to a transistor computer for seismic data processing (TI-AC) with ICs, the TI Advanced Scientific Computer (ASC) project started in 1965. It was also built with ECL because TTL was not fast enough. The main problem back then was the cooling of the processor. With the ASC, TI wanted to compete with the then leading CDC 7600 from Seymour Cray and used ideas from the CDC 6600 from Cray. The first ASC was delivered to Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands in 1970 and was produced until 1985. The machine had vector computer properties and could partially compete with the ILLIAC 4 parallel computer . In 1975, however, Cray again took over technological leadership with its Cray-1.

In the late 1970s he initiated the development of the Texas Instruments TMS320 signal processor , which came out in 1983. In 1984 he left TI and taught at the University of Texas at Austin . In retirement he deals with computer history ( Colossus , Norden bomb sighting device, torpedo data computer for torpedo steering in US submarines during World War II).

Cragon was a member of the National Academy of Engineering . In 1986 he received the Eckert-Mauchly Award and in 1984 the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary
  2. ↑ Initially, the S is said to have stood for Seismic according to its original purpose
  3. ↑ And also from secret computer projects at the National Security Agency that TI had access to because they were also involved. Oral History Interview by Cragon, Computer History Museum 2009, see web links.
personal data
SURNAME Cragon, Harvey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cragon, Harvey G.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer engineer at Texas Instruments
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Ruston , Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 2018
Place of death Shreveport , Louisiana