Bob Bemer

Bob Bemer is well known for meeting the world's needs for variant character sets and other symbols, via ASCII, ASCII-alternate sets, and escape sequences. He studied Mathematics at Albion College, and Aeronautical Engineering at Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute. After working with the Douglas Aircraft Company and RKO Radio Pictures, Bemer began working as a programmer for the Rand Corporation. Since then, Bemer has worked for Lockheed, Marquardt, IBM, Univac, Bull General Electric, General Electric, Honeywell, and created his own software company.

Bemer devised the first computerized 3-D dynamic perspective; a prelude to today's computer animation. Bemer developed the first load-and-go computer method known as PRINT I. He also developed FORTRANSIT, XTRAN, and the Commercial Translator. Bemer was the first to describe commercial timesharing publicly, which you now see as the Worldwide Web. Bemer is called the Grandfather of COBOL and the Father of ASCII. Among his other creations are the escape key and the backslash.

Accomplishments
1954 Discovered polynomial telescoping (jointly with C. Lanczos).
1954 Developed 3-D plotting of missile trajectories from telemetered data.
1956 Created PRINT I programming system for IBM. The first load-and-go compiler.
1957 Published first paper to describe commercial timesharing.
1958 Developed FORTRANSIT, first programming language to run on both binary (704) and decimal (650) computers [41,101,106]. It was the second FORTRAN compiler.
1958 Developed COMTRAN, one of the three major inputs to COBOL, originating the identification and Environment Divisions, and the Picture Clause. Named COBOL & CODASYL.
1958 Developed XTRAN, predecessor of ALGOL.
1958 Started Techniques Section of Communications of the ACM; edited for 4 years.
1958 Formed and donated nuclei of the libraries/repositories for ACM and BCS.
1960 Invited address to British Computer Society Annual General Meeting (one of two non Britishers ever to do so) [25].
1960 Originated what have become the ASCII and ISO character codes.
1960 Invented the ESCape sequence mechanism.
1960 Invented a data compression method for communication.
1960 Wrote original scope and program of work for USA and ISO computer standards.
1960 Was a major influence in choosing the 8-bit character in IBM System 360.
1960 ACM Council member (through 1966).
1961 U.S. Representative on the IFIP Computer Vocabulary Committee.
1962 Authorized funding of SIMULA development. Sold two UNIVAC 1007s personally.
1964 Installed first labor distribution and costing system for software production.
1965 Originated the concept of the "software factory".
1966 Initiated first major software instrumentation in GE 600 salvage.
1968 Named a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1968 Software Factory presented, NATO Conference on Software Engineering.
1968 Chairman, ISO/TC97/SC5, Common Programming Languages.
1969 Program Chairman for ACM 70, and proposer of National Computer Year.
1969 Created the ISO Registry concept for approved and established sets auxiliary to ASCII.
1971 Editor of "Computers and Crisis".
1971 Editor of Honeywell Computer Journal. Innovating multiple translations, integral fiche-of-the-issue. First ISO A4 size publication in U.S. Plus multimedia publishing.
1971 Adjoined HIS text editing to photocomposition
1971 Published world's first warning on Year 2000 problem.
1973 Program Chairman, Methods & Applications, First National Computer Conference.
1975 Chairman, X3/SPARC Study Group on Text Processing.
1978 Created Screen Environment (R), first half-duplex full-screen editor.
1979 Published world's second warning on Year 2000 problem.
1996 Developed method to ameliorate Year 2000 problem (U.S. Patent 5,978,809).
1996 Series of talks on the Year 2000 problem. Numerous TV and radio appearances and articles in the general and technical press.
1998 Developed the XDay method for universal time calculations.
2002 IEEE Computer Pioneer Award Recipient
 

For more information you can reach Bob Bemer either through email or his website.

email: bob@bobbemer.com
web site: http://www.bobbemer.com/

Page last updated Monday August 13, 2007 (JHS)