Charles Denis Mee is an engineer, physicist, and author who is noted for his contributions in the areas of

magnetic recording Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ac ...

and

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are conside ...

hard disk drives A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk platter, platters ...

(HDD).Computer History Museum: Oral history Jack Harker with Denis Mee
/ref> A large part of his career was with IBM in San Jose California. He is the author or editor on several books on magnetic recording.

Background

Charles Denis Mee (Denis) was born on December 28, 1927, in Loughborough, England."A Century of Honors", IEEE Press, page 319, 1984
/ref> He married his childhood sweetheart, Molly (née Orchard) in 1951. They emigrated to the US in 1957 and settled in Los Gatos CA in 1965. They have one son Robert Mee received a Bachelor of Science degree from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

in 1948. In 1951, he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

. In 1967, he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree also from the University of Nottingham.

Career

From 1951 to 1957, Denis Mee worked for M.S.S. in Colnbrook, UK in the field of Magnetics. In 1957, he emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

to join

Columbia Broadcasting System CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...

Laboratories where he became Technical Director of the Magnetics Group. In 1964, he received the IRE Audio Society Award for his work on high-density audio stereo tape recording (a precursor to the consumer audio

cassette tape The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

). Mee joined

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...

Yorktown Heights Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census. History Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in northern ...

in 1962 as a research staff member. Three years later, he transferred to the IBM Advanced Technology group in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

. He subsequently contributed to and managed several ground-breaking data storage technology programs such as thin-film heads for hard disk drives and several types of optical storage technologies. In 1982 Mee was a co-founder and first director of IBM's Magnetic Recording Institute, one of the first of 19 joint programs at IBM, in this case focused on storage technology. He was appointed

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...

in 1983. Mee retired from IBM in 1993 and has since been a consultant to and participant in joint industry-university magnetic and optical data storage programs. He led IBM's efforts in the early 1980s to establish University Research Centers in magnetic and optical storage including ones at the Center for Magnetic Recording Researc
(CMRR)
at

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

and the Data Storage Systems Cente
(DSSC)
at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

. He is a co-founder and first chairman of the board of the National Storage Industry Consortium (now Information Storage Industry Consortium, INSIC) founded in 1991 to enhance industry competitiveness thru cooperation between universities and industry. Mee is one of the founding members of and has been a major contributor to th
Storage Special Interest Group
at the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

. Mee's son, Robert C. Mee, is the founder and CEO of

Pivotal Software Pivotal Software, Inc. was an American multinational software and services company based in San Francisco that provided cloud platform hosting and consulting services. Since December 2019, Pivotal has been part of VMware. History Pivotal So ...

Awards and recognition

In 1964, Mee received the

Institute of Radio Engineers The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) was a professional organization which existed from 1912 until December 31, 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) to form the Institute of Electrical a ...

(IRE) Audio Society Award "for outstanding work on high-density audio stereo tape recording". He was made a Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

for his "extraordinary record of accomplishments" in 1970. He was also placed on the

IT History Society The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

Honor Roll as a "key technologist and pioneer in the computer industry". He received an IBM Corporate Recognition Award in 1980. Denis Mee became an

in 1983. In 1994 he received the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award "for contributions to the design of optical, magneto-optical, and magnetic recording files". In 1996, he became a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

, a list of "the world's most accomplished engineers", for "contributions to magnetic storage and the development of thin-film heads". In 2000, he received the IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award. for "his technical accomplishments and his services to the magnetics community".

Books and publications

Among the books Denis Mee has authored, co-authored or edited are: * “Physics of Magnetic Recording”, North Holland Pub. Co. (1964) * “Magnetic Recording” (3 volumes), McGraw-Hill (1987–88) edited with Eric D. Daniel **Vol. I : Technology **Vol. II : Computer Data Storage **Vol. III : Video, Audio & Instrumentation Recording * "Magnetic Recording Handbook", McGraw-Hill (1989) edited with Eric D. Daniel * "Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years", edited with Eric D. Daniel and Mark H. Clark, Wiley-IEEE Press (1998). Mee has published about 58 books and articles which as of 2019 have been cited more than 1400 times.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mee, Charles Denis IBM Fellows Fellow Members of the IEEE Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering 1927 births Alumni of the University of London People from Loughborough 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers 20th-century British engineers English emigrants to the United States Alumni of the University of Nottingham Living people