From: internetado@alt119.net   
      
   Engineer, Entrepreneur, Visionary   
      
   Chester Gordon Bell was born in Kirksville, Missouri on August 19,   
   1934, and was named after both his father, Chester Bell, an electrician   
   and appliance repairman, and Lola Gordon Bell, a grade schoolteacher.   
   Bell gained experience working with electricity at an early age, wiring   
   houses and repairing appliances for the family business, Bell Electric.   
   Hard work and a passion for science experiments and puzzles led him to   
   attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned   
   his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Electrical   
   Engineering. While at MIT, Bell worked with pioneers of computing Jay   
   Forrester and Ken Olsen-all three would become CHM Fellows.   
      
   In 1958, Bell was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of New South   
   Wales in Australia, where he taught computer systems design and   
   proposed to his bride-to-be, Gwen, via an English Electric DEUCE   
   computer, a computer designed after the Pilot ACE of Alan Turing.   
      
   In 1960, Olsen and colleague Harlan Anderson recruited Bell to their   
   new company, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC was instrumental   
   in the development of minicomputers-a new class of computer they   
   defined-and Bell quickly became a pivotal figure in the company';s   
   growth through his technical skills and engineering leadership.   
      
   Bell';s first major project at DEC was the PDP-1 (Programmed Data   
   Processor-1), one of the earliest minicomputers. The PDP-1 was   
   revolutionary for its time, a powerful yet relatively affordable   
   computer for which Bell designed the I/O subsystem (and invented the   
   UART). Bell';s work on the PDP-1 laid the foundation for the subsequent   
   PDP computer series, including the wildly successful PDP-8 (1965) and   
   PDP-11 (1970) models.   
   Gordon was respected for both his technical and engineering leadership   
   skills at DEC and Microsoft. Bell (left) at the PDP-6, Digital   
   Equipment Corporation, 1964.   
      
   From 1966-72, on leave from Digital, Bell was Professor of Computer   
   Science and Electrical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. He   
   and Allen Newell coauthored Computer Structures (1971), rewritten in   
   1982 with Dan Siewiorek. The book was an ambitious attempt to compare   
   computer architectures of the time using a specialized taxonomy they   
   had developed and was widely used in universities.   
      
   In 1972, Bell returned to Digital as vice president of research and   
   development, and led the development of DEC';s VAX (1975-1978) family   
   of minicomputers-models of which defined technical computing for the   
   next decade around the world, from small laboratories to large   
   multi-user university departments. In spite of DEC's promotion of its   
   in-house VMS operating system, it was upon VAX computers that the   
   competing Unix system evolved. In part because of this, the VAX family   
   was arguably the most important group of computer systems of its   
   time-for both the growth of the internet and for academic computer   
   science in universities to flourish. Bell was also instrumental in the   
   promotion of Ethernet as a standard for local area networks, along with   
   Intel and Xerox, a key milestone in its acceptance (as was   
   establishment of the IEEE 802 working group).   
      
   With Ken Olsen and then-wife Gwen, Bell cofounded the Digital Computer   
   Museum in Marlborough, MA (1979); becoming The Computer Museum, Boston,   
   MA (1984); and, with cofounder networking entrepreneur Len Shustek, The   
   Computer Museum History Center, Mountain View, CA (1996), and finally,   
   the Computer History Museum (1999). (We write now from the mighty oak   
   which has grown from the acorn these three visionaries planted that   
   day). Since its founding, Gwen and Gordon Bell were very generous   
   donors and supporters of the Museum and have attracted other generous   
   supporters as well through their network of personal contacts.   
   Gordon understood before many that the technology revolution needed to   
   be preserved. The Computer Museum, Boston was cofounded by Bell in   
   1979.   
      
   Bell left DEC again in 1983 after suffering a heart attack in March of   
   that year. Upon recovery, he later cofounded supercomputer startups   
   Encore Computer, Ardent (1986) and Stardent (1989). The goal at Encore   
   Computer and its follow-on companies was to build computers with   
   supercomputer-level performance and visualization at lower cost by   
   using off-the-shelf components.   
      
   In the 1980s, Bell became involved with the National Science Foundation   
   to help drive its investments in supercomputing and in 1987 established   
   the Gordon Bell Prize in conjunction with the Association of Computing   
   Machinery to drive innovation in parallel processing-a Prize that   
   remains highly sought after by the high-performance computing   
   community.   
      
   In recognition of his efforts, in 1991, President George H.W. Bush   
   awarded Bell the National Medal of Technology "for his continuing   
   intellectual and industrial achievements in the field of computer   
   design; and for his leading role in establishing cost-effective,   
   powerful computers which serve as a significant tool for engineering,   
   science, and industry."   
   Gordon was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George   
   W. Bush in 1991.   
      
   In the 1990s, Bell was instrumental in convincing Microsoft to   
   establish a research arm and he joined Microsoft Research from 1995 to   
   2012, working on various projects including his daily "life-logging"   
   application, MyLifeBits.   
   Gordon pioneered wearable technology with his passion for   
   "lifelogging." Shown here with his wearable camera on the cover of IEEE   
   Spectrum, 2005.   
      
   In 2003, Bell was named a Computer History Museum Fellow, "For his key   
   role in the minicomputer revolution, and for contributions as a   
   computer architect and entrepreneur."   
   Gordon Bell accepts his 2003 Fellow Award.   
   Gordon was a founding trustee of the Computer History Museum in   
   Mountain View. Shown here with his wife Sheridan Sinclaire-Bell, at the   
   CHM Fellows Awards, 2019. Bell was made a CHM Fellow in 2003.   
      
   Bell could think at the micro and macro scales with ease. After decades   
   of observation, he proposed this eponymous law: "Roughly every decade a   
   new, lower priced computer class forms based on a new programming   
   platform, network, and interface resulting in new usage and the   
   establishment of a new industry." This is an observation-based   
   conclusion, using the history of computing as its lodestar: mainframes,   
   minicomputers, microcomputers, smartphones, the Cloud . . . are   
   chapters in Bell's "book" of computer classes.   
      
   Datamation magazine called Bell, "the Frank Lloyd Wright" of computing.   
   As an architect for five decades of computing systems, he not only   
   witnessed but personally shaped our civilization's transition from   
   room-sized mainframe computers to the personal computer and   
   beyond-making this "most incredible invention of the 20th century" as   
   Bell called the computer-smaller, more interactive, affordable-and   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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