Calvin Mooers

Calvin Northrup Mooers ( born 1919 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, † December 1, 1994 in Cambridge ( Massachusetts)) was an American pioneer of computer science. He is the founder of information retrieval and developed with TRAC one of the first programming languages.

Mooers studied until 1941 at the University of Minnesota mathematics. From 1941 to 1946 he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). End of the 1940s he coined the terms descriptor, and information retrieval.

He founded the Rockford Research Institute, where he 1961, the new programming language TRAC invented.

For his work he was awarded the 1978 Award of Merit from the American Society for Information Science ( ASIS ).

Mooers law

In 1959 he formulated the law named after him Mooers (English Mooers ' Law, not to be confused with Moore's Law ):

"An information retrieval system will tend not to be used Whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it. "

" An information retrieval system will tend not to be used when it is inconvenient and cumbersome for its users to have information that they do not possess. "

The statement is clearly in an article published in the same year Paper Mooers:

"It is now my suggestion so that many people june not want information, and thatthey want to avoid using a system described precisely Because it gives them information. "

"I guess now that many people would like to have any information and would rather forgo a system to use, just because it informs. "