Resumé of Bob Bemer

Curriculum Vitae -- Bob Bemer

ROBERT WILLIAM BEMER

Education

Cranbrook Academy, 1936
A.B., Mathematics, Albion College, 1940
Certificate, Aeronautical Engineering, Curtiss-Wright Tech. Inst., 1941

COMPANY

POSITION

UNTIL

Douglas Aircraft Company Aerodynamicist 1945 Oct

RKO Radio Pictures Senior Set Designer 1949 Mar

Rand Corporation Programmer 1951 Jun

Lockheed Aircraft Corp. Group Leader, Mathematical Analysis 1952 Nov

Marquardt Aircraft Company Manager, Numerical Analysis Group 1954 Mar

Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. Manager, Mathematical Analysis Dept. 1955 Dec

IBM Corporation Asst. Manager, Programming Research 1957 Jul

IBM Corporation Manager, Programming Systems 1960 Apr

IBM Corporation Manager, Corporate Logical Systems Standards 1961 Aug

IBM Corporation Director of Programming Standards 1962 Apr

Univac Div. of Sperry Rand Director of Systems Programming 1965 Feb

Bull General Electric, Paris Consultant to General Manager 1965 Aug

Bull General Electric, Paris "Chef", Software & Field Support 1966 May

General Electric Company Manager, Systems & Software Engineering Integration 1970 Oct

Honeywell Information Systems Consultant to V.P. ASTO, Ed., Honeywell Computer Journal 1974 Jul

Honeywell Information Systems Senior Consulting Engineer 1982 Oct

Bob Bemer Software Owner present

BigiSoft, Inc. Chief Scientist 1999 Jul

Accomplishment Highlights
(Reference numbers keyed to publications list)

YEAR

ACCOMPLISHMENT

1954

Discovered polynomial telescoping (jointly with C. Lanczos) [2].

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 [3,4,8].

1957

(Mar) Published first paper to describe commercial timesharing [7].

1958

Developed FORTRANSIT, first programming language to run on both binary (704) and
decimal (650) computers [44,105,110]. 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 [21,29,31,64,67]. Named COBOL & CODASYL.

1958

Developed XTRAN, predecessor of ALGOL [11,16,25,31,47,57].

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 -
[18,19,20,23,27,32,34,38,43,46,49,59,61,71,84,88,89,90,94,106,114].

1960

Invented the ESCape sequence mechanism [19,20,27,32,46,59,71].

1960

Invented a data compression method for communication [22,24].

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 [18,19,32].

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 [55,87].

1965

Originated the concept of the "software factory" [39,40,42,53,54,55,66,69,87,103].

1966

Initiated first major software instrumentation in GE 600 salvage [52].

1968

Named a Fellow of the British Computer Society.

1968

Software Factory presented, NATO Conference on Software Engineering [54].

1968

Chairman, ISO/TC97/SC5, Common Programming Languages.

1969

Program Chairman for ACM 70, and proposer of National Computer Year [62].

1969

Created the ISO Registry concept for approved and established sets auxiliary to ASCII.

1971

Editor of "Computers and Crisis" [65].

1971

Editor of Honeywell Computer Journal. Innovating multiple translations, integral fiche-of-the-issue,
and multimedia publishing [70,72]. First ISO A4 size publication in the U.S.

1971

Adjoined HIS text editing to photocomposition [73, 75]

1971

Published world's first warning on Year 2000 problem [68].

1973

Program Chairman, Methods & Applications, First National Computer Conference.

1975

Chairman, X3/SPARC Study Group on Text Processing [101].

1978

Created Screen Environment (R), first half-duplex full-screen editor [101,103,104,108,111,112,113]

1979

Published world's second warning on Year 2000 problem [95].

1996

Developed method to ameliorate Year 2000 problem (U.S. Patent 5,978,809) [119]

1996

Series of talks on the Year 2000 problem. [114,117,118,119,120].
Numerous TV and radio appearances, and articles in the general and technical press.

1998

Developed the XDay method for universal time calculations. [116].

2003

Received the IEEE Computer Society's "Computer Pioneer" Award.

2003

Named "Faculty Fellow", Information Systems Research Center, Univ. North Texas at Denton.

Back to Home Page

COMPANY	POSITION	UNTIL
Douglas Aircraft Company	Aerodynamicist	1945 Oct
RKO Radio Pictures	Senior Set Designer	1949 Mar
Rand Corporation	Programmer	1951 Jun
Lockheed Aircraft Corp.	Group Leader, Mathematical Analysis	1952 Nov
Marquardt Aircraft Company	Manager, Numerical Analysis Group	1954 Mar
Lockheed Missiles & Space Co.	Manager, Mathematical Analysis Dept.	1955 Dec
IBM Corporation	Asst. Manager, Programming Research	1957 Jul
IBM Corporation	Manager, Programming Systems	1960 Apr
IBM Corporation	Manager, Corporate Logical Systems Standards	1961 Aug
IBM Corporation	Director of Programming Standards	1962 Apr
Univac Div. of Sperry Rand	Director of Systems Programming	1965 Feb
Bull General Electric, Paris	Consultant to General Manager	1965 Aug
Bull General Electric, Paris	"Chef", Software & Field Support	1966 May
General Electric Company	Manager, Systems & Software Engineering Integration	1970 Oct
Honeywell Information Systems	Consultant to V.P. ASTO, Ed., Honeywell Computer Journal	1974 Jul
Honeywell Information Systems	Senior Consulting Engineer	1982 Oct
Bob Bemer Software	Owner	present
BigiSoft, Inc.	Chief Scientist	1999 Jul

YEAR	ACCOMPLISHMENT
1954	Discovered polynomial telescoping (jointly with C. Lanczos) [2].
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 [3,4,8].
1957	(Mar) Published first paper to describe commercial timesharing [7].
1958	Developed FORTRANSIT, first programming language to run on both binary (704) and decimal (650) computers [44,105,110]. 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 [21,29,31,64,67]. Named COBOL & CODASYL.
1958	Developed XTRAN, predecessor of ALGOL [11,16,25,31,47,57].
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 - [18,19,20,23,27,32,34,38,43,46,49,59,61,71,84,88,89,90,94,106,114].
1960	Invented the ESCape sequence mechanism [19,20,27,32,46,59,71].
1960	Invented a data compression method for communication [22,24].
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 [18,19,32].
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 [55,87].
1965	Originated the concept of the "software factory" [39,40,42,53,54,55,66,69,87,103].
1966	Initiated first major software instrumentation in GE 600 salvage [52].
1968	Named a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
1968	Software Factory presented, NATO Conference on Software Engineering [54].
1968	Chairman, ISO/TC97/SC5, Common Programming Languages.
1969	Program Chairman for ACM 70, and proposer of National Computer Year [62].
1969	Created the ISO Registry concept for approved and established sets auxiliary to ASCII.
1971	Editor of "Computers and Crisis" [65].
1971	Editor of Honeywell Computer Journal. Innovating multiple translations, integral fiche-of-the-issue, and multimedia publishing [70,72]. First ISO A4 size publication in the U.S.
1971	Adjoined HIS text editing to photocomposition [73, 75]
1971	Published world's first warning on Year 2000 problem [68].
1973	Program Chairman, Methods & Applications, First National Computer Conference.
1975	Chairman, X3/SPARC Study Group on Text Processing [101].
1978	Created Screen Environment (R), first half-duplex full-screen editor [101,103,104,108,111,112,113]
1979	Published world's second warning on Year 2000 problem [95].
1996	Developed method to ameliorate Year 2000 problem (U.S. Patent 5,978,809) [119]
1996	Series of talks on the Year 2000 problem. [114,117,118,119,120]. Numerous TV and radio appearances, and articles in the general and technical press.
1998	Developed the XDay method for universal time calculations. [116].
2003	Received the IEEE Computer Society's "Computer Pioneer" Award.
2003	Named "Faculty Fellow", Information Systems Research Center, Univ. North Texas at Denton.