C. Gordon Bell, a pioneering researcher and engineer in computing,died on May 17due to pneumonia at his home in Coronado, California. He was 89 years old. His groundbreaking technical achievements, as well as his efforts with the Computer History Museum, followed recurring health issues from birth.
Among his many achievements, one of the first and most major would have to be his contributions to the world’s first “minicomputers” in the 60s, which are bulky by today’s standards but were orders of magnitudes smaller than the room-sized mainframe PCs typical of that era. He helped work on Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP-1, PDP-4, and PDP-6— PDP-1 also known today as the PC on whichSpacewar!, the first-ever video game, was played.
Besides his contributions to the PDP minicomputers, Bell is also known forco-founding the Computer History Museumand leading severalMicrosoftresearch projects, including the likes ofMyLifeBits, which was Gordon Bell’s 2000s take on digitally archiving every piece of his life possible, well before the days of Twitter (‘06), Google Glass, orunwanted Copilot additions.
Bell received various honors from the computing community, includingthe IEEE John von Neumann Medal,the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and recognition as a member of organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. He also founded both Encore Computer and Ardent Computer, known for parallel computing and graphics-centric supercomputing, respectively.
When Bell was a small child,he was known to have struggled with health problemsthat regularly confined him to his home and his bed, but didn’t prevent him from becoming a professional electrician at age 12. He alsosuffered two separate heart attacksin his adult life.
Fortunately, none of that stopped Bell from helping make computing history as an academic, technologist, and archivist, and computing is better for it.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
