Franklin Herbert Westervelt ( – ) was an American engineer, computer scientist, and educator at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
and
Wayne State University
Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...
. Westervelt received degrees in Mathematics, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He attained his PhD in 1961. He was a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan and an Associate Director at the U-M Computing Center. He was involved in early studies on how to use computers in engineering education.
Biography
He was born in
Benton Harbor, Michigan
Benton Harbor is a city in Berrien County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is 46 miles southwest of Kalamazoo and 71 miles southwest of Grand Rapids. According to the 2020 census, its population was 9,103. It is the smaller, by population, ...
on to Herbert Oleander Westervelt and Dorothy Ulbright.
From 1965 to 1970 he was Project Director for the
ARPA sponsored CONCOMP (Research in Conversational Use of Computers) Project. He was involved in the design of the architecture and negotiations with
IBM over the
virtual memory
In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very ...
features that would be included in what became the
IBM S/360 Model 67 computer.
When
IBM's TSS/360
The IBM Time Sharing System TSS/360 is a discontinued early time-sharing operating system designed exclusively for a special model of the System/360 line of mainframes, the Model 67. Made available on a trial basis to a limited set of cust ...
time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1
Its emergence ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
for the S/360-67 was not available, the CONCOMP project supported the initial development of
Michigan Terminal System
The Michigan Terminal System (MTS) is one of the first time-sharing computer operating systems.. Developed in 1967 at the University of Michigan for use on IBM S/360-67, S/370 and compatible mainframe computers, it was developed and used by a ...
(MTS) in cooperation with the staff of the University of Michigan Computing Center.
[Computing at the University of Michigan: The Early Years through the 1960s]
Norman R. Scott, p. 12 This included
David L. Mills development of the original
PDP-8
The PDP-8 is a 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneer ...
Data Concentrator with its interface to an
IBM S/360 Input/Output channel, the first such interface to be built outside of IBM. CONCOMP also developed the integration for the
IBM 7772 based
Audio Response Unit (ARU) as an MTS I/O device, the
MAD/I compiler, mini-computer based graphics terminals, and the Set-Theoretic Data Structure model that was later used in
ILIR:MICRO.
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
program manager
Larry Roberts asked Frank to explore the questions of message size and contents for the ARPANET, and to write a position paper on the intercomputer communication protocol including “conventions for character and block transmission, error checking and re transmission, and computer and user identification." Frank also served as a representative to the statewide
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...
Inter-university Committee on Information Systems (MICIS) and was involved in establishing the
MERIT Computer Network.
Fred Gibbons, a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist, said that the
University of Michigan College of Engineering, where he earned his BSE and MSE degrees in the late 1960s and early 1970s when computers were unknown or a novelty in most classrooms and the school didn’t even offer a formal computer major, "... was at the forefront of technology that turned out to be very important to me personally, and I got early exposure to it from a couple of great guys–professors Frank Westervelt and
Bernard Galler."
U-M Vice President for Research Geoffrey Norman, writing in 1976, gave special credit to the triumvirate of Michigan computer specialists who contributed greatly to the future of computing at Michigan and in the nation as a whole. "Bartels,
Arden, and Westervelt," Norman has said, "were a team that we took great care should not be broken up or induced to leave the University. Westervelt, the hardware expert, Arden, brilliant in software and logic, and Bartels
orchestrating their progress-these three put together a superb timesharing computer system. The University and their faculty colleagues owe them much."
Frank Westervelt served Wayne State University from 1971 to 1982 as Director of the Computing Service Center, from 1982 to 2000 as professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering where he was Associate Chair and Undergraduate Officer from 1990 to 1994 and Chair from 1995 to 2000. He started interactive distance learning within ECE organizing, designing, and developing electronics classrooms and writing software to ease development of electronic presentations. He obtained the contract to develop and deliver the first ECE Course (ECE 562) to ECCE Master’s Program students at
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
by
Distance Learning
Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...
methods. In honor of his services Ford Motor Company presented him with the 1993 Customer driven Quality Award as a Member of Ford/Wayne State University Interactive Distance Education Program Team, the only award given by Ford to a university faculty member in 1993.
Frank died on at his home in
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all ...
.
Westervelt, Franklin
Obituary, Ann Arbor News, July 31, 2015. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Westervelt, Franklin H.
1930 births
2015 deaths
American computer scientists
American engineers
University of Michigan faculty
Wayne State University faculty
People from Ann Arbor, Michigan
People from Benton Harbor, Michigan
University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni