William H. Bridge

William H. "Bill" Bridge (* around 1928 ) is an American computer scientist and pioneer in computer networks (GE Datanet 30).

Bridge received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC in 1950 , and that same year joined the SEAC Computers team at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, under the direction of Samuel N. Alexander and then was one of the most advanced computer projects. In 1954 he went to ACF Electronics and in 1955 to Aitronics Inc., where he developed ferrite core memories with transistor circuit control. In 1957 he went to General Electric in their computer department in Phoenix (Arizona) . There he developed the first computer system for verifying checks on behalf of Bank of America and the NCR 304 computer for the National Cash Register Company. In order to meet further customer requirements with these computers and their GE 225 line of computers, he then developed the groundbreaking GE DATANET 30 computer network, usually with a central computer as a server that could be accessed by up to 15 peripheral stations. The first major customer was the Chrysler Corporation (for its teleprinter networks), and after this proved successful in 1962, other orders followed, including from Dartmouth College , where a computer network was created especially for students in 1964, for the John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz developed the BASIC computer language with which the students could run programs from terminals (the central computer was a GE 235). The time-sharing process developed there was also adopted by General Electric and was very successful as the GE 265 system - hundreds of systems were sold. A total of between 500 and 1000 DATANET 30 systems were sold.

Bridge left GE in 1964 and went to California for Silicon Valley, where he developed computer networks for factories with the newly founded Data Pathing Inc. They used some of the first ICs . He also developed a time-sharing system for the California Highway Engineering Department, network processors and terminals for Memorex, and high-speed semiconductor memory for Intel for IBM computers. He also dealt with optical mass storage and was a consultant for computer companies. In 1992 he retired.

In 2001 he received the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society.

Web links

• Computer Pioneer Award