Computer Pioneer Gordon Bell Passes Away
TapTechNews May 22nd news, according to senior Bell Labs insider John Mashey, computer pioneer Gordon Bell passed away due to aspiration pneumonia on May 17th (last Friday) local time at the age of 89.
Gordon Bell was an early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and played a key role in the development of several influential small computer systems, and was also a co-founder of the first major computer museum.
Bell is a key figure in the history of computing. He founded the Boston Computer Museum in 1979 and later became a core member of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View along with his wife Gwen Bell. He is also the provider of the ACM Gordon Bell Prize, which was established to promote innovation in parallel processing and is the highest award in the field of international high-performance computing applications.
According to Wikipedia, Gordon Bell was born in 1934 in Kirksville, Missouri, USA, and obtained an electrical engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1960, he was hired by DEC founders Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson. As DEC's second computer engineer, Bell was responsible for various components of the PDP-1 system, including floating-point subroutines, tape controllers, etc.
During his time at DEC, Bell also invented the first UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) for serial communication. He went on to design several influential DEC systems, including the PDP-4 and PDP-6. In the 1970s, he played a key role as an engineering manager in supervising the above-mentioned VAX minicomputer product line.
After retiring from DEC in 1983, Bell remained active as an entrepreneur, policy advisor, and researcher. He was a co-founder of Encore Computer and helped establish the NSF's Computing and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.
In 1995, Bell joined Microsoft Research. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 1991 Bush Medal and the 1992 IEEE John von Neumann Medal.
TapTechNews noticed that after the news of Bell's death spread on social media, former Microsoft chief technology officer Ray Ozzie wrote: I can't fully describe my love for Gordon and the respect I have for his contribution to the industry.... During my time at Microsoft, I met Gordon countless times, and he served as my listener and helped me overcome the challenges I faced. Gordon, we will all miss you. Thank you for everything you have done for each of us, for all of us. You are one of my heroes.
