Erich Bloch, who helped develop the IBM mainframe has gone at 91
Bloch died November 25 in Washington from complications of Alzheimer's disease, his daughter, Rebecca Rosen, told the Washington Post.
The mainframe computers Bloch helped to develop ushered in the modern computing era, providing a cornerstone that allows us to perform a variety of tasks on the internet, including shopping, banking and making airline reservations, among many others.
In the mid-1950s, Bloch contributed to the development of the IBM 7030, a supercomputer popularly known as "Stretch" that could perform 100 billion computations a day and handle half a million instructions per second. It was about 30 to 40 times faster than other systems, but IBM discontinued the Stretch after shipping only nine systems to quell charges that it exerted monopoly control over the computer market.
"The first 30 years of computing is what most of the work going on today is based on," he said. "What you see today is a reflection of the fact those systems we developed were built to be durable and flexible."
After retiring from IBM in 1984, Bloch was appointed director of the National Science Foundationby President Ronald Reagan. During his six-year term, he oversaw the creation of NSFNET, a precursor to the modern internet.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar