11 Apr
2024
11 Apr
'24
2 p.m.
On Apr 11, 2024, at 2:42 AM, Joseph S. Barrera III via
cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 6:36 AM Murray McCullough via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
> I don’t think I truly realized the seminal work done at IBM then
> (60's&70's).
One interesting historic tidbit is the Dutch connection on the IBM/360. One of the lead
designers on the 360 was Gerrit Blaauw, a Dutch computer engineer who learned his craft at
Harvard (with Aiken), and refined it at the MC in Amsterdam (now CWI) leading the design
of several one-off research computers. Among other things, he taught the other designers
that logic needs to be clocked to be reliable. :-)
After that, he left for IBM and worked on several computer designs, culminating in the
360. Wikipedia says that the choice of 8 bit characters rather than the then-current 6
bits came from him.
paul