Old programmers never die, they just decompile

Last week I wrote in memory of Jean Bartik, the last of the original six ENIAC programmers. Unfortunately there have been several important figures in computer history who left us recently. Some are extremely famous, such as DEC founder Ken Olsen and networking pioneer Paul Baran; both rightfully  received significant media attention for their accomplishments. But some others aren't well known, despite their importance, so here are a few thoughts in their honor too.

Stan Veit (July 29, 2010) ran Computer Mart of New York, which was the first computer store in New York City. Later he was an editor at Popular Electronics and then led Computer Shopper –- who among us didn't spend our influential years reading those magazines? And finally, he wrote Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer, which Atlanta-area collector David Greelish published in podcast form. Around metropolitan New York, Stan wasn't just a store owner and journalist, he was a legend.

Tom Kirk (Oct. 18, 2010) was largely unknown outside of central New Jersey. Among his career stops was a stint at Xitan / Technical Design Labs which was a manufacturer in the S-100 category. Its software evolved in Epson's. Tom was also a passionate packrat whose personal collection included an IBM 1130 mainframe, DEC PDP-8/E, several keypunches and teletypes, dozens of AT&T 3B2 UNIX boxes, and thousands of books and magazines. Tom is gone, however, his collection and thus his memory lives on in the MARCH (Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists) computer museum in Wall, New Jersey. (Disclosure: I am personally involved in that organization.)

Watts Humphrey (Oct. 28, 2010) did his best work at Sylvania, IBM, and the Software Engineering Institute. In the 1950s and 1960s, at Sylvania, he worked on FIELDATA which was a military predecessor to ASCII. His role at IBM was in the business side of software. Then, at SEI, he became a leader in the quality assurance realm. In 2005 he won the National Medal of Technology.

Neil Otto (Jan. 26, 2011) is the least famous of this group. Neil operated a company here in New Jersey called Otto Electronics and taught engineering at the prestigious College of New Jersey. He was a popular source of used computer parts for local hobbyists and a strong supporter of the Trenton Computer Festival –- the longest-running computer show anywhere (and where you can meet or heckle me this weekend.)

Dimitry Grabbe (March 2, 2011) had a career which arguably impacted the most people of this group. He worked on approximately 500 patents related to the electronic and industrial packaging of circuits, eventually becoming director of R&D at AMP and an IEEE Life Fellow. As with Tom Kirk, Dimitry's personal technology artifacts are housed at the New Jersey computer museum. His IEEE oral history is here.

So the next time you meet at old hand at technology development, be sure to appreciate and learn from him or her. Otherwise you may never know what contributions they made to the field, whether famous or not, and how their work could impact your own.

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