George Stibitz

George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was an American researcher at Bell Labs. He is known as one of the creators of the modern digital computer.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Stibitz worked on using special electrical parts called relays to make digital circuits. These circuits followed rules called Boolean logic, which are important for how computers think today. His work helped shape the computers we use now.

Early life and education

George Stibitz was born in York, Pennsylvania. His mother, Mildred Murphy, taught math, and his father, George Stibitz, was a German Reformed minister and teacher. From a young age, Stibitz liked to build things, using items like a toy Meccano set or the electrical wiring in his home.

He studied math at Denison University in Granville, Ohio and later earned a master's degree in physics from Union College. He finished his education at Cornell University in 1930, where he got a Ph.D. in mathematical physics.

Computer

George Stibitz started working at Bell Labs after finishing his studies and stayed there until 1941. In November 1937, he built a simple machine called the "Model K" on his kitchen table. This machine could add numbers using a special counting method called binary addition. Copies of the "Model K" are now kept in several famous places, including the Computer History Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the William Howard Doane Library, and the American Computer & Robotics Museum in Bozeman, Montana.

Later, Bell Labs let Stibitz lead a big research project. He helped create a more advanced machine called the Complex Number Calculator (CNC), which was finished in November 1939 and started working in 1940. In September 1940, Stibitz showed how this machine could be controlled from far away using a special device called a teletype to send commands over telegraph lines to the machine in New York. This was the first time a computer could be used from a distance in real time.

Wartime activities and subsequent Bell Labs computers

When the United States joined World War II in December 1941, Bell Labs started making tools to help guide weapons for the military. One of their well-known tools was the M-9 Gun Director, a clever device that helped aim anti-aircraft guns very accurately. George Stibitz worked with the National Defense Research Committee, which gave advice to the government, but he stayed closely connected to Bell Labs.

From 1941 to 1945, Bell Labs created computers using telephone relays. These computers grew more advanced over time. The first one helped test the M-9 Gun Director. Later versions got even better and were given names like "Model II" and "Model III". The "Model V", finished in 1946, could be used for many different tasks, though it was slower because it used relays instead of newer electronic parts.

After the war, Stibitz left Bell Labs to work privately. From 1964 until he retired in 1974, he worked at the medical school of Dartmouth College studying physiology.

Use of the term "digital"

In April 1942, George Stibitz went to a meeting about tools to help fight during World War II. He noticed that ideas were split into two groups: "analog" and "pulse." After the meeting, he wrote a note suggesting using the word "digital" instead of "pulse" because "pulse" didn’t clearly explain what was happening. However, he also said that separating analog and digital wasn’t very useful in practice, since most computers at the time used both types of mechanisms.

Awards

George Stibitz received many honors for his important work. In 1965, he was given the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award together with Konrad Zuse. In 1977, he received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award for his early work on computers. He also received IEEE's Computer Pioneer Award in 1982.

Stibitz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1981 and to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1985. He held 38 patents and joined Dartmouth College in 1964 to help connect computing with medicine. He stopped research work in 1983.

Computer art

In his later years, Stibitz began using a Commodore-Amiga to create computer art. He shared in a letter that his goal was not to make important art but to show that using computers for fun activities could be enjoyable, much like when computers were first being created fifty years earlier. The Mathematics and Computer Science department at Denison University displayed some of his artwork.

Publications

George Stibitz wrote important papers and books about computers. In 1943, he received a patent for a "Binary counter." Later, in 1954, he got another patent called "Complex Computer." In 1957, he and Jules A. Larrivee wrote a book named Mathematics and Computers.