Robert Rex Seeber Jr. (1910-1969), an inventor at IBM, co-invented the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC). He was born in

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

, graduated with an A.B. from

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 ...

in 1932. He died in

La Jolla, California La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

. His primary research contributions were in computer systems design, and associative memories and processors. As a mathmetician, Seeber began his career as section head, actuarial, at the

John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. John Hancock Life Insurance Company, U.S.A. is a Boston-based insurance company. Established April 21, 1862, it was named in honor of John Hancock, a prominent American Patriot. In 2004, John Hancock was acquired by the Canadian multinational l ...

, from 1932-42. From 1942-45, he did civilian research on submarine, anti-submarine, air, and anti-air operations for the U.S. Navy. He also performed mathematical computing for the Navy. The balance of Seeber's professional life was as a computer architect and inventor at International Business Machines Corp. from 1945-68. Seeber's first project at IBM was the SSEC. He was an advocate of modifiable instruction sets. For this machine was developed the

stored-program A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechanisms. The definition i ...

concept, the basis of modern computing machines. As a senior staff member of the Department of Pure Science for IBM, he was responsible for supervision of the computation and educational activities at the Watson Laboratory. Seeber was also the inventor of the "Wordwriter" an

IBM Selectric The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961. Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the perio ...

typewriter with a memory capable of storing 42 eighteen-character words and phrases, selected by the operator. Stored words were selected by pressing a foot pedal at the same time as striking the letter to which the word is keyed. The machine featured optional automatic capitalization and hyphenation.Mary Ellen Thomsen, "Typist's Dream" in Harvard Alumni Bulletin, January 14, 1956.

Partial list of awards

* Naval Ordnance development award, 1944. * Division of War reserves award, Columbia University, 1944. * Office of Scientific Research and Development, Certificate of Merit, 1945.

References

* ''American Men of Science: A Biological Directory, The Physical and Biological Sciences'', Supplement 4, edited by The Jaques Cattell Press, Eleventh Edition. R.R. Bowker Company. New York & London. 1968. p. 520. * Mary Ellen Thomsen, "Typist's Dream" in ''Harvard Alumni Bulletin'', January 14, 1956. * Charles J. Bache, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, and Emerson W. Pugh, ''IBM's Early Computers''. MIT Press. 1986. * Emerson William Pugh, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, ''IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems''. MIT Press. 1991. p. 681. {{DEFAULTSORT:Seeber, Robert Rex Jr. 1910 births 1969 deaths Harvard University alumni IBM employees People from Detroit