James Wares Bryce (1880 – 1949) was an American engineer and inventor. In 1936, on the centenary of the

United States Patent Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...

, he was honored as one of the country’s 10 greatest living inventors.Cohen, I. Bernard (Spring 1999)
Father of the computer age.
''Invention & Technology'', Volume 14, Issue 4 Born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

on September 5, 1880, his father was from

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

and mother was from

Wick Wick most often refers to: * Capillary action ("wicking") ** Candle wick, the cord used in a candle or oil lamp ** Solder wick, a copper-braided wire used to desolder electronic contacts Wick or WICK may also refer to: Places and placename ...

. He studied for three years at City College of New York before taking a draftsman position in 1900. In 1903 he worked for

J. Walter Christie John Walter Christie (May 6, 1865 – January 11, 1944) was an American engineer and inventor. He is best known for developing the Christie suspension system used in a number of World War II-era tank designs, most notably the Soviet BT and T-34 ...

and helped develop a

front-wheel-drive Front-wheel drive (FWD) is a form of engine and transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional longi ...

racing car. In 1904 he went to work for H. T. Goss, who later formed the partnership of Goss & Bryce. One of their contracts was with

Bundy Manufacturing Company The Bundy Manufacturing Company was a 19th-century American manufacturer of timekeeping devices that went through a series of mergers, eventually becoming part of International Business Machines and Simplex Time Recorder Company. It was the fi ...

who made

time clock A time clock, sometimes known as a clock card machine or punch clock or time recorder, is a device that records start and end times for hourly employees (or those on flexi-time) at a place of business. In mechanical time clocks, this was accomp ...

s used to track hours worked by industrial workers. He took a position at the

Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems subsequently known as IBM. In 1911, financier and noted trust organizer, "Father of Trusts", Charles R. Flint ama ...

(later known as IBM) in 1917 as supervising engineer of the division that developed time recording machines. Time clocks used punched cards to record workers in and out times. Subtracting these two gave hours worked on each day, and adding them all up gave total work time. This was easily automated by mechanical machines. However, to compute wages, the hours must be multiplied by salary per hour. Bryce invented one of the first electromechanical multipliers using

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 for this application, and became IBM's chief engineer. In 1937 Bryce was approached by

Howard 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 ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, who persuaded IBM to fund a programmable calculator which became the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), better known as the Harvard Mark I. When Aiken published a press release announcing the ASCC. Bryce was the only IBM person mentioned. In 1946 Bryce designed the first commercial electronic multiplier using

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as ...

s, which IBM marketed as the

IBM 603 The IBM 603 Electronic Multiplier was the first mass-produced commercial electronic calculating device; it used full-size vacuum tubes to perform multiplication and addition.

. He adapted the 603 to become the arithmetic logic unit in the

Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was an electromechanical computer built by IBM. Its design was started in late 1944 and it operated from January 1948 to August 1952. It had many of the features of a stored-program computer ...

(SSEC). (Includes photo) However, he was too ill to attend the dedication of the SSEC in January 1948, and died in March 1949.

References

External links

IBM100 Centennial Site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bryce, James W. 1880 births IBM employees 1949 deaths