Nobuo Mii (=Mii Nobuo; July 4, 1931 – July 14, 2015), often called Nobi by English speakers, was a Japanese computer pioneer who made various contributions, working for

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

and IBM, and also is an investment fund executive.

Early life and education

Nobuo Mii was born in

Fukuoka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Fukuoka Prefecture has a population of 5,109,323 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,986 Square kilometre, km2 (1,925 sq mi). Fukuoka Prefecture borders S ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, on July 4, 1931. He studied at Fukuoka Prefectural

Shuyukan Senior High School is a co-educational public senior high school in Fukuoka, Fukuoka, Japan. Overview Founded as a Han school in 1784, Edo period, Shuyukan is one of the oldest high schools in Japan with a history of over 200 years. After the Meiji Restoration, ...

and

Kyushu University , abbreviated to , is a Japanese national university located in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu. It was the 4th Imperial University in Japan, ranked as 4th in 2020 Times Higher Education Japan University Rankings, one of the top 10 Design ...

, graduating from the latter in 1955.Nobuo Mii, "Unseen Country, Unseen Rules" (Tokyo: Diamond Sha, 1998, 237 pages) ; in Japanese, 三井信雄(著), 『見えない国見えないルール』, ダイヤモンド社) In senior high school, he was the manager of Wireless Communications Club. In 1949, he successfully lead the club members to make a

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

system for the first time in

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

, mainly using the electronic parts thrown away by the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in

Fukuoka City is the sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancie ...

, ahead of Kyushu University's Engineering School or NHK's Fukuoka Broadcasting Station. His television was displayed at Western Japan Invention Exhibition and won the Invention Award from the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

Career

In NHK

Upon graduation from university, he started to work at

NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL, ja, NHK放送技術研究所, NHK Hōsō Gijutsu Kenkyūjo), headquartered in Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan, is responsible for technical research at NHK, Japan's public broadcaster. Work done by t ...

, Japan Broadcasting Corporation. Half a year later, he was sent by NHK to

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

to study

transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...

technology, and, upon return to Japan, made contribution to the application of transistors in broadcasting. From 1961, he worked in a team in NHK to automate their program preparation and broadcasting. This team eventually implemented the Total Online Program and Information Control System (TOPICS), using

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...

and

IBM 1800 The IBM 1800 Data Acquisition and Control System (DACS) was a process control variant of the IBM 1130 with two extra instructions (CMP and DCM), extra I/O capabilities, 'selector channel like' cycle-stealing capability and three hardware index regi ...

computers. TOPICS was developed in close relationship with IBM's Federal Systems Division.

In IBM

During NHK's TOPICS project, Nobuo Mii impressed Bob Evans, who had led the

project to success and was the head of Federal Systems Division at that time, and was invited to work for IBM. He was hired by IBM Japan, Ltd., in 1969, but was immediately sent to IBM in U.S. and worked on Apollo Project. In 1971, as IBM created IBM Japan Development Laboratory, Nobuo Mii became its Technical Operations director, working in

Research Triangle Park Research Triangle Park (RTP) is the largest research park in the United States, occupying in North Carolina and hosting more than 300 companies and 65,000 workers. The facility is named for its location relative to the three surrounding cities ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

, and lead the project to develop

IBM 3767 IBM 3767 Communication Terminal is a serial printer terminal that employed dot matrix print-head technology and, for the first time, the Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC) communications protocol set under IBM's Systems Network Architecture (SNA ...

printer terminal, using the new

Systems Network Architecture Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is IBM's proprietary networking architecture, created in 1974. It is a complete protocol stack for interconnecting computers and their resources. SNA describes formats and protocols but, in itself, is not a pi ...

communications protocol. In 1973, he became Director of the renamed IBM Fujisawa Development Laboratory and lead various projects for the Japanese and worldwide markets, which included: IBM Japanese Language Processing System, the "Gemstone" low cost communications terminal series (

IBM 3101 The IBM 3101 ASCII Display Station, and IBM's subsequent products, the 3151/315X and 3161/316X, are display terminals with asynchronous serial communication (start-stop signaling) that were used with a variety of IBM and non-IBM computers during the ...

ASCII, 3104, 3178/3179 display terminals), etc. He was also involved in the development of

IBM 5550 IBM 5550 is a personal computer series that IBM marketed in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s, for business use customers. In Japan, it was introduced in 1983 and promoted as "" because it had three roles in one machine: a ...

and IBM JX, which eventually led his Laboratory to develop

IBM ThinkPad ThinkPad is a line of business-oriented laptop computers and tablets designed, developed and marketed by Lenovo, and formerly by IBM until 2005, when IBM's PC business was acquired by Lenovo. ThinkPads have a distinct black, boxy design lan ...

. In 1990, Nobuo Mii was named an IBM Corporate Vice President. He was later named a Director in Entry Systems Division and Power Personal Division. He was also a KALEIDA board member from December 1991. In 1993, he became President of Power Personal Systems Company, whose objective was to develop, manufacture and promote

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

microprocessor. He retired from IBM in 1995.

In an investment fund

After retirement from IBM, he became the head of

Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

's software company in U.S. In 1997 he created Ignite Group in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

, and set up Ignite Japan in 2000, becoming its Chairman.

References

External links

Nobuo Mii's Profile
(IBM Archives) {{DEFAULTSORT:Mii, Nobuo 1931 births 2015 deaths People from Fukuoka Prefecture Japanese computer scientists IBM employees NHK Kyushu University alumni Columbia University alumni