Bob Bemer

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Bob Bemer
Sperry Rand, Bull, General Electric, Honeywell
Websitebobbemer.com

Robert William Bemer (February 8, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was a computer scientist best known for his work at IBM during the late 1950s and early 1960s.[1]

Early life and education

Born in

aeronautical engineering at Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute
in 1941.

Career

Bemer began his career as an

Sperry Rand in 1965, Bull from 1965, General Electric from 1970, and Honeywell from 1974.[2]

He served on the committee which amalgamated the design for his

Cie. Bull, France, between 1965 and 1966.[4] He also proposed the term hextet for 16-bit groups.[4]

Bemer is probably the earliest proponent of the software factory concept. He mentioned it in his 1968 paper "The economics of program production".[5]

Other notable contributions to computing include the first publication of the time-sharing concept in 1957 and the first attempts to prepare for the Year 2000 problem in publications as early as 1971.[6] Acting in an advisory capacity, Bob and Honeywell employees Eric Clamons and Richard Keys developed the Text Executive Programming Language (TEX).[7]

In the late 1990s, as a retiree, Bob invented an approach to Year 2000 (Y2K) date conversion, to avoid anticipated problems when dates without centuries were compared in programs for which

runtime
and checking their operands, adjusting the comparison so that low years in the new century did not appear to precede the last years of the twentieth century.

Bob Bemer maintained an extensive collection of archival material on early computer software development at www.bobbemer.com.

Death

Bemer died at his home in Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas in 2004 at age 84 after a battle with cancer.[8][9][10][11]

References

  1. ^ a b "Biography of Robert William Bemer".
  2. ^ "Resumé of Bob Bemer". Archived from the original on 2017-06-28. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  3. ^ Bemer, Bob (2002-07-07). "The Great Curly Brace Trace Chase". Computer History Vignettes. Bob Bemer. Archived from the original on 2009-06-04. Retrieved 2009-10-11.
  4. ^
    UNICODE set. I'm not sure, but maybe this should be called a "hextet
    ". […]
  5. ^ "The Software Factory Principle". Archived from the original on 2001-04-06.
  6. S2CID 30976386
    . Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  7. ^ "Introduction to TEX". Interface Age: 144. August 1978.
  8. ^ Sullivan, Patricia (2004-06-25). "Computer Pioneer Bob Bemer, 84". The Washington Post. p. B06. Retrieved 2016-06-15.
  9. ^ Vance, Ashlee (2004-06-24). "Programming pioneer Bob Bemer dies at 84 - ASCII, ESC, /, COBOL, Y2K, RIP". The Register. Archived from the original on 2016-06-16. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  10. ^ "Key computer coding creator dies". BBC. 2004-06-25. Archived from the original on 2016-06-16. Retrieved 2016-06-16.
  11. ^ "Computer pioneer dies". CNN. 2004-06-24. Archived from the original on 2004-12-04. [1][permanent dead link]

Further reading

External links

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