Arnold Spielberg

Arnold Meyer Spielberg (February 6, 1917 – August 25, 2020) was an American electrical engineer instrumental in contributions "to real-time data acquisition and recording that significantly contributed to the definition of modern feedback and control processes". For General Electric he designed, with his colleague Charles Propster, the GE-225 in 1959. He cited the first computer-controlled "point of sale" cash register as his greatest contribution. His children include filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and screenwriter Anne Spielberg.

Early life and career

Arnold Spielberg was born in Cincinnati on February 6, 1917. He was of Jewish descent. His mother, Rebecca (née Chechick), was born in Sudylkiv, Ukraine; his father, Samuel, was born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine. They later immigrated to the United States, meeting and eventually marrying in Cincinnati.

From the age of nine, he began building radios. He scrounged parts from garbage cans to assemble his first crystal receiver. He grew up in Avondale, Cincinnati. Spielberg graduated Hughes High School in 1934. In 1934, he worked in Cynthiana, Kentucky, for his cousin's Lerman Brothers department store.

"At 15, Arnold became a ham radio operator, building his own transmitter, a skill that proved fortuitous when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in January 1942, one month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and joined the Signal Corps."

After training as a radio-operator/gunner for the Air Corps, his skills in the design of new airplane antennas elevated him to the position of Communications Chief in ''490th Bomb Squadron'', a B-25 Squadron in India. During the Holocaust, Spielberg lost between 16 and 20 relatives.

Spielberg married concert pianist Leah Posner (1920–2017) in January 1945. After graduating from the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, he joined RCA's Advanced Development Department in 1949, where he did early work on servo and guidance systems. In 1955, he joined General Electric’s computer department in Schenectady, New York. In 1957, Spielberg relocated to Phoenix, to found the G.E. Industrial Computer Department. In 1963, Spielberg left G.E. In 1964, Spielberg moved to Los Gatos, California.
In 1965, the Spielbergs divorced, and Spielberg moved with his son to Saratoga, California.

Moscow

In 1960, Spielberg traveled to Moscow as part of a delegation of electrical engineers from Phoenix. The trip coincided with an incident that became the subject of his son's 2015 film '' Bridge of Spies''. Steven Spielberg described the event his father experienced at the time:

The Russians were putting the pilot Gary Powers' helmet and his flight suit and the remains of the U-2 plane on show for everyone in Russia to see. A military man saw my father's American passport and took him to the head of the queue and repeated really angrily to the crowd, "look what your country is doing to us."

Work

When RCA entered the computer field, Spielberg began doing early circuit designs implementing computer logic. Moving into systems design, he was responsible for the design of a tape-to-tape data sorter. He designed and patented the first electronic library system, implemented as an interrogation system for data stored on an array of magnetic tapes. Promoted to Manager of Advanced Product Development, he was given responsibility for development of a "point of sales" system. The system involved a central processing computer called Recorder Central with ten satellites, specially designed point-of-sale units. All data were error-checked by feedback data verification. The system had all the capabilities of today's point-of-sale systems, including price lookup on a large drum storage unit, calculating sales transactions including sales tax and discounts, and credit verification.

In 1957, Spielberg began working for General Electric, where he was instrumental in developing the GE-200 series of computers. The GE-225 was derived from the GE-312 and 412 process-control computers. Spielberg and Charles "Chuck" H. Propster had worked together at RCA on BIZMAC before designing the GE-225, which was introduced in 1960.

Spielberg retired in 1991 but continued consultation work for technology companies. He also worked with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, an organization founded by his son Steven.

Personal life and death

Spielberg had four children with his wife Leah: son Steven and daughters Anne, Nancy, and Sue. He also had 14 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren. His third wife, Bernice Colner, died in 2016. Spielberg died from natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, California, on August 25, 2020, at the age of 103.

Steven Spielberg's 2022 film, ''The Fabelmans'', is a fictionalized account of his own childhood, which he wrote with Tony Kushner. Gabriel LaBelle plays the lead role of Sammy Fabelman, a character inspired by Spielberg, while Michelle Williams plays his mother Mitzi Fabelman (based on Leah), Paul Dano as Burt Fabelman, his father (based on Arnold), Julia Butters as Reggie Fabelman, his first younger sister (inspired by Anne), Seth Rogen as Bennie Loewy, Burt's best friend and co-worker who becomes Sammy's surrogate uncle (based on Bennie Adler), and Judd Hirsch as Mitzi's Uncle Boris. Filming began in Los Angeles in July 2021, and the film was released on November 23, 2022, by Universal Pictures.

Recognition

*IEEE 2006 Computer Pioneer Award

References

External links

Arnold Spielberg Talks About GE's First Digital Blockbuster

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spielberg, Arnold
1917 births
2020 deaths
American centenarians
American electrical engineers
American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
People from Cincinnati
Family of Steven Spielberg
University of Cincinnati alumni
Engineers from Ohio
20th-century American engineers
Men centenarians