Edmund Berkeley

Edmund Callis Berkeley (* February 22, 1909; † 7 March 1988) was an American computer scientist who co-founded in 1947 the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM ). He was also politically active and worked on conditions which should reduce the risk of nuclear war.

Life

Berkeley graduated from Harvard University in 1930 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and logic from. From 1934 to 1948 he worked as an actuary at Prudential Insurance, interrupted by service in the United States Navy during the Second World War.

Berkeley saw in 1939 the computers of George Stibitz at Bell Laboratories and in 1942, the Harvard Mark I. Thereupon he designed in November 1946 a specification for a "Sequence Controlled Calculator for the Prudential ," which meant that in 1947 with the Eckert Mauchly computer Corporation, a contract for the delivery of the first UNIVAC computer was closed. In 1948, Berkeley left Prudential and became an independent IT consultant, because the company forbade him to participate in projects in order to avoid a nuclear war. He occasionally wrote under the pseudonym " Neil D. MacDonald ".

He became famous in 1949 with the publication of his book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think ( "giant brains or thinking machines " ), in which he described the basics of computers with him in " mechanical brains ", "sequence controlled calculators " and some other designations occurred. To this end, he gave a technical but easy to understand description of the most computer of its time, including machines from MIT, Harvard, the Moore School, Bell Laboratories and others.

In this book, Berkeley also outlined the first home computers, Simon. Plans for this were published in the years 1950 and 1951 in the journal Radioelectronics. Simon worked with relay and was built for about $ 600. The first working copy was built at Columbia University with the help of two graduate students.

Berkeley was founder, publisher and editor of the journal Computers and Automation which is considered the first computer magazine. He also designed the game computer Geniac and Brainiac ( computer).

In 1958, Berkeley joined the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy ( SANE ).

  • Computers: Their Operation and Applications ( 1956), New York: Reinhold Publishing
  • Symbolic Logic and Intelligent Machines ( 1959), New York: Reinhold Publishing
  • Probability and Statistics: An Introduction through the experiment ( 1961), Science Materials Center
  • The Computer Revolution ( 1962), Doubleday
  • The Programming Language LISP: Its Operation and Applications ( 1964)
  • A Guide to Mathematics for the Intelligent Nonmathematician (1966 ), Simon and Schuster
  • Computer-assisted Explanation: A Guide to Explaining: and some ways of using a computer to assist in clear explanation (1967 ), Information International
  • Ride the East Wind; Parables of Yesterday and Today (1973 ), Quadrangle, ISBN 0-81290375-7
  • The Computer Book of Lists and First Computer Almanack (1984 ), Reston Publishing, ISBN 0-83590864 -X
Nuclear warfare Prudential Financial Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation UNIVAC I Information technology consulting Simon (Computer)
254362
de