HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was a
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
researcher internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer. He was known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on the realization of
Boolean logic In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variable (mathematics), variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denote ...
digital circuits using electromechanical
relay A relay Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off A relay is an electrically operated switch ...
s as the switching element. Stibitz was born in
York, Pennsylvania York ( Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Yarrick''), known as the White Rose City (after the symbol of the House of York), is the county seat of York County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the south-central region of the state. The populati ...
. He received his bachelor's degree from
Denison University Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...
in
Granville, Ohio Granville is a Village (United States)#Ohio, village in Licking County, Ohio, United States. The population was 5,646 at the United States Census 2010, 2010 census. The village is located in a rural area of rolling hills in central Ohio. It is e ...
, his master's degree from
Union College Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...
in 1927, and his Ph.D. in mathematical physics in 1930 from
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
.


Computer

In November 1937, George Stibitz, then working at Bell Labs (1930–1941), completed a relay-based
adder Adder may refer to: * AA-12 Adder, a Russian air-to-air missile * Adder (electronics), an electronic circuit designed to do addition * Adder Technology, a manufacturing company * Armstrong Siddeley Adder, a late 1940s British turbojet engine * ''B ...
he later dubbed the " Model K" (for "kitchen table", on which he had assembled it), which calculated using
binary addition A binary number is a number expressed in the base-2 numeral system or binary numeral system, a method of mathematical expression which uses only two symbols: typically "0" (zero) and "1" (one). The base-2 numeral system is a positional notation ...
. Replicas of the "Model K" now reside in 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 ...
, the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
, the
William Howard Doane William Howard Doane (February 3, 1832 – December 24, 1915) was a manufacturer, inventor, hymn writer, choral director, church leader and philanthropist. He composed over 2,000 church hymns. More than seventy patents are credited to him for ...
Library at Denison University and the
American Computer Museum The American Computer & Robotics Museum (ACRM), formerly known as the American Computer Museum, is a museum of the history of computing, Communication protocol, communications, artificial intelligence and robotics that is located in Bozeman, Mont ...
in
Bozeman, Montana Bozeman is a city and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States. Located in southwest Montana, the 2020 census put Bozeman's population at 53,293, making it the fourth-largest city in Montana. It is the principal city of th ...
, where the George R. Stibitz Computer and Communications Pioneer Awards are granted. Bell Labs subsequently authorized a full research program in late 1938 with Stibitz at the helm. Their Complex Number Computer, completed in November 1939 and put into operation in 1940, was able to do calculations on
complex numbers In mathematics, a complex number is an element of a number system that extends the real numbers with a specific element denoted , called the imaginary unit and satisfying the equation i^= -1; every complex number can be expressed in the form a ...
. In a demonstration to the
American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
conference at
Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
in September 1940, Stibitz used a modified
teletype A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...
to send commands to the Complex Number Computer in New York over telegraph lines. It was the first computing machine ever used remotely.


Wartime activities and subsequent Bell Labs computers

After the United States entered
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
in December 1941, Bell Labs became active in developing fire-control devices for the U.S. military. The Labs' most famous invention was the M-9 Gun Director, an ingenious
analog device Analog devices are a combination of both analog machine and analog media that can together measure, record, reproduce, receive or broadcast continuous information, for example, the almost infinite number of grades of transparency, voltage, re ...
that directed anti-aircraft fire with uncanny accuracy. Stibitz moved to the
National Defense Research Committee The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the Un ...
, an advisory body for the government, but he kept close ties with Bell Labs. For the next several years (1941–1945), with his guidance, the Labs developed relay computers of ever-increasing sophistication. The first of them was used to test the M-9 Gun Director. Later models had more sophisticated capabilities. They had specialized names, but later on, Bell Labs renamed them "Model II", "Model III", etc., and the Complex Number Computer was renamed the "Model I". All used telephone relays for logic, and paper tape for sequencing and control. The "
Model V The Model V was among the early electromechanical general purpose computers, designed by George Stibitz and built by Bell Telephone Laboratories, operational in 1946. Only two machines were built: first one was installed at National Advisory Com ...
", was completed in 1946 and was a fully programmable, general-purpose computer, although its relay technology made it slower than the all-electronic computers then under development. After the war, in 1945, Stibitz did not return to Bell Labs, but instead went into private consulting work.


Use of the term "digital"

In April 1942, Stibitz attended a meeting of a division of the
Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1 ...
(OSRD), charged with evaluating various proposals for fire-control devices to be used against Axis forces during World War II. Stibitz noted that the proposals fell into two broad categories: "analog" and "pulse". In a memo written after the meeting, he suggested that the term "
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...
" be used in place of "pulse", as he felt the latter term was insufficiently descriptive of the nature of the processes involved.Bernard O. Williams, "Computing with Electricity, 1935–1945," PhD Dissertation, University of Kansas, 1984 (University Microfilms International, 1987), p. 310


Awards

*
Harry H. Goode Memorial Award The Harry H. Goode Memorial Award is an IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated discipline ...
in 1965 (together with
Konrad Zuse Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-c ...
) * * IEEE's
Computer Pioneer Award The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. T ...
, 1982 * election to 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 ...
, 1981 * election to the
National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also opera ...
, 1985 Stibitz held 38 patents, in addition to those he earned at Bell Labs. He became a member of the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1964 to build bridges between the fields of computing and medicine, and retired from research in 1983.


Computer art

In his later years, Stibitz "turned to non-verbal uses of the computer". Specifically, he used a Commodore-Amiga to create computer art. In a 1990 letter, written to the department chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science department of Denison University he said:
I have turned to non-verbal uses of the computer, and have made a display of computer "art". The quotes are obligatory, for the result of my efforts is not to create important art but to show that this activity is fun, much as the creation of computers was fifty years ago.
The Mathematics and Computer Science department at Denison University has enlarged and displayed some of his artwork.


Publications

*

(4 pages) *

(102 pages) *


See also

*
List of pioneers in computer science This is a list of people who made transformative breakthroughs in the creation, development and imagining of what computers could do. Pioneers : ''To arrange the list by date or person (ascending or descending), click that column's small "up-do ...
*
John Vincent Atanasoff John Vincent Atanasoff, , (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor from mixed Bulgarian-Irish origin, best known for being credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer. Atanasoff invented the ...
*
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
*
Gray code The reflected binary code (RBC), also known as reflected binary (RB) or Gray code after Frank Gray, is an ordering of the binary numeral system such that two successive values differ in only one bit (binary digit). For example, the representati ...
(reflected binary code) *
Stibitz code Excess-3, 3-excess or 10-excess-3 binary code (often abbreviated as XS-3, 3XS or X3), shifted binary or Stibitz code (after George Stibitz, who built a relay-based adding machine in 1937) is a self-complementary binary-coded decimal (BCD) code ...
(excess-3 code) * Gray–Stibitz code (Gray excess-3 code)


References


Further reading

* Melina Hill, Valley News Correspondent, ''A Tinkerer Gets a Place in History'', Valley News West Lebanon NH, Thursday March 31, 1983, page 13. * Brian Randall, ed. ''The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers'' (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1975), pp. 237–286. * Andrew Hodges (1983), '' Alan Turing: The Enigma'',
Simon and Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...
, New York, . Stibitz is mentioned briefly on pages 299 and 326. Hodges refers to Stibitz's machine as one of two "big relay calculators" (
Howard H. Aiken Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was an American physicist and a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer. Biography Aiken studied at the University of Wisconsi ...
's being the other one, p. 326). ::"The second American project iken's being the firstwas underway at Bell Laboratories. Here the engineer G. Stibitz had first only thought of designing relay machines to perform decimal arithmetic with complex numbers, but after the outbreak of war had incorporated the facility to carry out a fixed sequence of arithmetical operations. His 'Model III' icwas under way in the New York building at the time of
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
's stay there, but it had not drawn his attention." (p. 299) : Stibitz's work with binary addition has a peculiar (i.e. apparently simultaneous) overlap with some experimenting Alan Turing did in 1937 while a PhD student at Princeton. The following is according to a Dr. Malcolm McPhail "who became involved in a sideline that Alan took up" (p. 137); Turing built his own relays and "actually designed an electric multiplier and built the first three or four stages to see if it could be made to work" (p. 138). It is unknown whether Stibitz and/or McPhail had any influence on this work of Turing's; McPhail's implication is that Turing's "
larm Larm may refer to: * Lärm Lärm (German for ''noise'') were a Dutch straight edge hardcore band formed in 1981, first playing under the name of Total Chaoz. They referred to their music as "extreme noise", though having nothing to do with noise ...
bout a possible war with Germany" (p. 138) caused him to become interested in cryptanalysis, and this interest led to discussions with McPhail, and these discussions led to the relay-multiplier experiments (the pertinent part of McPhail's letter to Hodges is quoted in Hodges p. 138). * * Smiley, Jane, ''The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer'', Random House Digital, Inc., 2010. .
Obituary by Kip Crosby of the Computing History Association of California




(Detailed description and history) *


External links

* ttp://stibitz.denison.edu George R. Stibitz website at Denison University
Home of the George R. Stibitz Computer and Communications Pioneer Awards


– By Kerry Redshaw, Brisbane, Australia
The Papers of George Stibitz
at Dartmouth College Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Stibitz, George 1904 births 1995 deaths Cornell University alumni Denison University alumni Union College (New York) alumni Scientists at Bell Labs People from York, Pennsylvania 20th-century American inventors