Jack Harker
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John Mason "Jack" Harker (June 29, 1926 – April 27, 2013) was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and product and program manager who pioneered development of
disk storage Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...
systems.John Mason (Jack) Harker (1926 - 2013) Obituary
San Jose Mercury News, May 12, 2013
Starting as a member of the original team that developed the first disk storage system, he went on to develop IBM Direct Access Storage products for the next 35 years. Over that time, Harker was twice director of the IBM San Jose Storage Laboratories, an
IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...
, and an
IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...
. He retired from IBM in 1987 and died in 2013.


Early years

Jack Harker was born in San Francisco in 1926 and during World War II enlisted in the navy, becoming an electronics repair specialist, serving on board in both the Atlantic and Pacific. He received his BA in mechanical engineering from Swarthmore in 1950 and master's degree in mechanical engineering from
University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
in 1952. In 1962 he received a master's degree in electrical engineering from
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
.


IBM career

Harker advanced through a series of positions at IBM to become the IBM San Jose Laboratory Director in 1972. He is best known for his leadership of the 1311 Disk File project, but he considered the 1350/1360 (Cypress) Image Storage System his most challenging assignment and the creation of the Technology and Advanced Development Group (TAD) in 1969 amongst his most important accomplishments. After graduating from Berkeley he was hired in 1952 by
Reynold B. Johnson Reynold B. Johnson (July 16, 1906September 15, 1998) was an American inventor and computer pioneer. A long-time employee of IBM, Johnson is said to be the "father" of the hard disk drive. Other inventions include automatic test scoring equipment ...
as the eighteenth employee of the new IBM design laboratory in San Jose, California, United States. An early project was as a mechanical engineer on the original team developing the
IBM 350 IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible fo ...
RAMAC disk storage unit, the world's first hard disk drive. After RAMAC his next project was working for
Alan Shugart Alan Field Shugart (September 27, 1930 – December 12, 2006) was an American engineer, entrepreneur and business executive whose career defined the modern computer disk drive industry. Personal history Born in Los Angeles, he graduated fro ...
on the
IBM 1301 IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible fo ...
. Harker led development of the first ''self flying'' disk heads. As Air Bearing Development Manager, Harker led the development effort for self-acting air bearings, which lowered the disk heads and relied on flying them over the surface using the air flow from the disk underneath instead of the pressurized air from an air compressor as used by RAMAC. Hard disk drives today continue to use self-acting air bearings. Harker led the
IBM 1311 IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible fo ...
project as the engineering manager for the first successful removable disk drive. He was instrumental in inventing the removable disk pack. From 1960 to 1969 he was first the engineering manager and then Program Manager for development and delivery of the IBM 1350 Photo Image Retrieval System / 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System. The IBM 1360 was the first " trillion-bit" data storage system (about 160  GB). It was developed for the Atomic Energy Commission. From 1969 to 1972 he was Direct Access Storage Product Manager responsible for what was then IBM's most profitable line of business. During the time, work was put into place that led to the “Winchester” magnetic recording components and thin film recording structures. In 1972, Harker first became the director, San Jose Development Laboratory. During this time as Product Manager and then as Laboratory Director, he oversaw development and release of many important and innovative storage systems such as: * 2305 fixed-head and 3330 disk pack drive systems. In addition to integrating the ferite head and slider unit, they were microcodable systems featuring the first use of an innovative new small disk drive using flexible media to load the microcode; this was the first floppy disk, the IBM 23FD. *The
IBM 3850 The IBM 3850 Mass Storage System was an online tape library used to hold large amounts of infrequently accessed data. It was one of the earliest examples of nearline storage. History Starting in the late-1960s IBM's lab in Boulder, Colorado be ...
Mass Storage System (MSS) (Boulder Labs) automated tape library – an early automated tape library and tape cartridge system *The
IBM 3340 IBM manufactured magnetic disk storage devices from 1956 to 2003, when it sold its hard disk drive business to Hitachi. Both the hard disk drive (HDD) and floppy disk drive (FDD) were invented by IBM and as such IBM's employees were responsible ...
– "Winchester" disk drive * Thin film disk heads Harker later held the positions of Director of Technology for IBM and later, again Director of the San Jose Laboratories before his retirement in 1987. He died in 2013.


Honors

*In 1974, Harker was appointed an
IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...
. *In 1993, he received the first IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award "for leadership in the development of information storage devices."


References


Further reading


A Quarter Century of Disk File Innovation
IBM Journal of Research and Development, 1981 * "History of Magnetic Disk Storage Based on Perpendicular Magnetic Recording," A. Hoagland, IEEE Trans Mag, Jul 2003 * "IBM;s Early Computers," Bashe et al., The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1986.
Creating Magnetic Disk Storage at IBM
Engineering and Technology History Wiki, 2015


External links


Jack Harker at the IBM 100th Century Dinner



Early IBM movie on the start of IBM San Jose Labs and RAMAC

1968 IBM movie on the manufacturing of Magnetic Disk Packs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harker, Jack IBM employees IBM Fellows History of computing hardware American computer businesspeople American manufacturing businesspeople Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area 1926 births 2013 deaths Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area