The IEEE Computer Pioneer Award

(from the Awards Program Booklet)
Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel, Vancouver, BC
2003 May 09

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The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the electronic computer industry. The award is presented annually to outstanding individuals whose main contribution to the concepts and development of the computer field was made at least fifteen years earlier.

The recognition is engraved on the Computer Pioneer medal specially struck for the Society.

The Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society is proud to recognize Robert W. Bemer as a Computer Pioneer.

 

"For meeting the world's needs for variant character sets and other
symbols, via ASCII, ASCII-alternate sets, and escape sequences"

 
Bob Bemer, becoming a programmer in early 1949, has worked at RAND Corporation,
Marquardt, Lockheed, IBM, Univac, Bull GE, General Electric, and Honeywell.

• At Lockheed, he devised the first computerized 3-D dynamic perspective,
  prelude to today's computer animation.
• At IBM, he developed
  • PRINT I (the first load-and-go computer method),
  • FORTRANSIT (the first major proof of intercomputer portability, and
    the second FORTRAN compiler),
  • Commercial Translator (a COBOL input), and
  • XTRAN (an ALGOL predecessor).
• In 1957 March he was the first to describe commercial timesharing publicly,
  which you now see as the Worldwide Web.
• In 1959 his internal IBM memo proposed word processing.
• The Identification and Environment Divisions of COBOL are due to him, as is
  the Picture Clause, which could have avoided the Year 2000 problem if
  used correctly.
• He coined the terms "COBOL", "CODASYL", and "Software Factory".
• He was the major force in developing ASCII (contributing 10 characters --
  ESCape (see that key), FS, GS, RS, US, {, }, [, ], and the backslash).
  He invented the escape sequence and registry concept, and is called
  the "Father of ASCII".
• He wrote the original scope and program of work for international and
  national computer standards, and chaired the international committee for
  programming language standards for eleven years.
• He was Program Chairman for ACM 70, promoter of National Computer Year
  (when the Y2K problem should have been solved), and edited the proceedings
  as the book "Computers and Crisis".
• Three Pioneer Days have honored him -- SHARE, COBOL, and FORTRAN.
• As editor of the Honeywell Computer Journal (the first A4-size publication
  [1971] in the U.S.) he innovated fiche-of-the-issue and multimedia publishing.
• He has published more than 115 articles in technical journals.
• In 1995 he received the Albion College Distinguished Alumnus Award.
• In 2000 he was named in the Delta Tau Delta "Rainbow" as one of the
  "100 Most Influential Delts of the 20th Century".
• He is recognized as the first person in the world to publish warnings of the
  Year 2000 problem -- first in 1971, and again in 1979. For this he has appeared
  on CNET, NBC Nightly News, CNN, Good Morning America, the BBC,
  Good Morning Australia, and local TV stations; and has been profiled in the
  Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, New York Times, Time Magazine, Vanity
  Fair, the Baltimore Sun, Scripps and Gannett newspapers, the Washington Post,
  People Magazine, and many others.

 

See for text of the nomination.

See Past Recipients

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