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Gordon Bell has died

workergnome
12 replies
22h24m

My father worked with him at CMU and the story he always told (while possibly apocryphal) was that the reason that the ASCII bell character sequence was CRTL-G was because of Gordon.

kragen
7 replies
19h38m

it seems somewhat unlikely. let's follow the trail

the existence of bell characters, of course, predates gordon bell's existence itself (they're in the ita2 baudot-murray code from 01932, two years before his birth) so what we're discussing is specifically the assignment of the ascii bell character to the control character corresponding to bell's middle initial

it was already ^g in 01963 according to tom jennings's excellent history https://web.archive.org/web/20100414012008/http://wps.com/pr... https://landley.net/history/mirror/ascii.html#ASCII-1963 and at that point bell had just started working at dec three years before. however, he was working on serial communications at dec, and had just been doing research at mit, so it wouldn't be terribly surprising if he, or friends of his from mit or dec, were to sit on the ansi (then asa) committee

mackenzie's 'coded character sets' from 01980 has a chapter 13 about ascii https://textfiles.meulie.net/bitsaved/Books/Mackenzie_CodedC... but unfortunately it doesn't go into any detail on the composition of the asa committee. note that mackenzie was the ibm thug who invented ebcdic and spent the 60s and 70s trying to kill ascii, so he devotes most of the book to glorifying that catastrophic error; the book is from 01980, the year before ibm shipped its first ascii-supporting equipment, the ibm pc. it's reasonable to see jennings's account as a violent reaction against mackenzie's book, writing the malignant influence of the punched-card codes out of history entirely, though, as we'll see, the original draft of ascii was designed by a punched-card man

bell's oral history interviews https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10270203... don't mention ascii or asa or ansi, so he probably wasn't on the committee, but if it was a connivance by a friend of his, it would be easy to imagine him deliberately not mentioning it

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/363831.363839 is an early (01965) publication of what eventually became ascii-1967, but it doesn't list the subcommittee members; the subcommittee seems to have been x3.2 at that point, though the 01963 document was called x3.4-1963

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/06/1963.idg/ says the original proposal was submitted to ansi (though other sources say ansi didn't exist yet) by bob bemer of ibm in 01961. i thought it would be interesting to see if it already had ^g for bel, because bemer would be unlikely to know bell at that point

in 02002 bemer wrote a 52-page history of ascii himself called 'a story of ascii' https://archive.org/details/ascii-bemer which includes a survey of coded character sets from 01960, including the character set used on the 'lincolnwriter' at mit, where bell had been working, and the pdp-1 for which bell designed the uart, as well as another 40 or so. so it wasn't like there was no contact. as it happens, neither of those two character sets includes a bell character

the bell character appears in the first version of the ascii proposal in the leftmost column of table 3 on page 17 — but at position 10, from which it was moved to its current position of 7 (^g) after four revisions (iso/tc97 wg b, 01962 may 4, following x3.2/1, which was 01961 september 18). his only comment on why they moved all the control characters around was, 'the controls were regularized and grouped to 7 transmission controls, 6 format effectors, and 5 device controls; the improvement from the haphazardness of the previous proposals is quite apparent.' this was shortly before ibm sent him to the penalty box for promoting ascii, leading to him quitting to go to univac

at that point there was still disagreement about whether to start the alphabet at the beginning of a 16-codepoint 'column' or, as is done today, one character later, so that a corresponds to 1, b corresponds to 2, etc. so assigning bel to 7 could have ended up with it being ^h. (i'm not clear on whether the ctrl key existed yet, but i'm pretty sure bit-paired keyboards did, on the teletype.)

unfortunately bemer is also largely silent on the membership of the committee, though he does mention particular members from time to time. unless i've overlooked it, he doesn't mention anyone from mit or dec. the iso meeting was an international thing, with delegations from the us and various european countries, and thus seems particularly unlikely to have redesigned the character set to honor a dec engineer, who the committee members would think of as an american engineer

so it's probably just a coincidence, but the evidence i've been able to turn up is not very conclusive

gojomo
1 replies
17h20m

I like that your deep dive into whether this story might be true is the polar opposite of the "too good to check" impulse in journalism & social media, which instead tries to squeeze some attention & entertainment out of a pleasing story before doing any checks that might ruin the illusion.

mauricioc
0 replies
9h22m

The grandparent thought this was implausible, researched it as an outsider (with a slight bias towards thinking the claim is false, which is not a problem per se) and still didn't find any refutation. While I applaud the impetus behind the research, I'm more inclined to believe the apocryphal story after reading the attempt to refute it; not every piece of gossip will be supported by a written statement.

darkwater
1 replies
7h1m

Off-topic but, why are you using a leading zero to number years?

panosfilianos
0 replies
11h6m

replies like these are the only reason to be at HN

mgarciaisaia
0 replies
12h59m

Don't you ever let reality get in the way of a good story

chris_wot
0 replies
12h59m

Sir, that is an amazing answer and a real gem of info on HN - thank you!

inopinatus
1 replies
20h37m

code 007, it's a secret

kevindamm
0 replies
18h52m

Ah, hidden in plain sight, the seventh letter of the alphabet being G.

AnimalMuppet
0 replies
22h9m

I have no data, but I wish that to be true. What an amazing tribute.

jpgvm
5 replies
22h34m

Gordon was the first investor in my first startup, the first guy that believed in us.

Even though I only met him later in his life he was still sharp as a tack, never lost the mind of the engineer. Sometimes it's best not to meet your heroes but Gordon lived up to the hype and then some.

Super gentle, generous with his time, the consummate gentleman.

One of my fondest memories from my startup years was enjoying dinner with Gordon and his wife in Sydney, she made the most amazing cookies. To this day I don't think I have had a better cookie haha.

Visited the computer history museum with him once for a bit of a VIP tour I guess. So many stories about PDPs and all the friends he made along the way.

Thanks for all the stories and memories old man, you have earned your rest.

RIP.

pfdietz
4 replies
21h15m

I wonder if that cookie recipe is written down somewhere.

Gordon Bell practiced "lifelogging", so maybe!

avagate
3 replies
17h42m

His lifelogging was a project called MyLifeBits. He wore a camera that took a picture every 20 seconds. Even called the book about his work Total Recall (and MSFT's new product that does something similar on the desktop is called Recall). Someone who worked with him at MSR wrote about it:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gordon-bell-standing-shoulder...

Roritharr
0 replies
6h23m

I wish I could set my Meta Glasses to do this for special occasions where it's socially acceptable.

drew870mitchell
0 replies
2h50m

The book is wonderful, as biz-tech-optimist quick reads go, and some of its ideas have stuck with me over a decade after reading it. I'm almost entirely off MSFT products now but i was heartened to see the Recall announcement the other day. Bell was a rare visionary. RIP

ChrisArchitect
4 replies
21h31m

From the Computer History Museum homepage:

REMEMBERING CHM COFOUNDER GORDON BELL

CHM is saddened to share the news that Museum cofounder and Fellow Gordon Bell passed away on May 17, 2024. Bell was a prominent American electrical engineer and computer scientist who made a tremendous impact on the world of computing—from handheld devices to supercomputers. Bell is in the pantheon of brilliant computer designers that includes Seymour Cray and Gene Amdahl.

Beyond his groundbreaking engineering contributions, Bell has been a major force in preserving and presenting the history of computing to millions of visitors and explaining its impact on the world around us. With his then-wife, Gwen, and DEC cofounder Ken Olsen, he started The Computer Museum in Boston, which later became the Computer History Museum. Bell was a generous longtime donor and active member of the Board of Trustees. He will be missed by all.
jhbadger
0 replies
20h25m

It was unfortunate (at least for East Coasters) that the Computer Museum moved to the West Coast in 1999 -- I used to enjoy visiting it in Boston in the 1980s and 1990s. But I suppose with the decline of DEC and the rise of Microsoft and Apple in the 1980s that the center of the computer industry moved West too.

ericd
0 replies
19h5m

My wife jokes that we’ve never made it to the end of that museum, because the museum has always closed before we get to the end, and we’ve been at least a dozen times. I had no idea he cofounded it, among his other accomplishments.

davidmurphy
0 replies
19h14m

I work at CHM, and we had a staff lunch today coincidentally. I raised a (non-alcoholic) toast in tribute to Gordon Bell with colleagues as we dined at my lunch table. Grateful for his legacy!

Here he is speaking at a CHM event last year on Ethernet's 50th: https://youtu.be/T9On2L0-ObU?t=2267

smarks
2 replies
1d1h

Here’s a link to Mashey’s post on mstdn:

https://mstdn.social/@JohnMashey/112477330642538953

It’s short enough that I’ll quote it here.

“I am very sad to report death May 17 at age 89 of Gordon Bell, famous computer pioneer, a founder of Computer Museum in Boston, and a force behind the @ComputerHistory her in Silicon Valley, and good friend since the 1980s. He succumbed to aspiration pneumonia in Coronado, CA. I'm told there will be a "Celebration of Life" service in August in Silicon Valley. (Another fallen giant, we attended a similar service in April for another, Nobelist Arno Penzias.)”

HN should post the black bar.

smarks
1 replies
20h36m

In the thread below his preview post, Mashey added the following (edited for typos):

"When I lead tours of Computer History Museum, I usually say there were 3 giants in the early decades of computer architecture:

Gene Amdhal - mainframes

Gordon Bell - minicomputers

Seymour Cray - supercomputers

and I was lucky to know the first two well, never met Cray."

https://mstdn.social/@JohnMashey/112477430691339073

082349872349872
0 replies
9m

never met Cray

We lost Cray* to an untimely automobile accident. It'd be possible to have many fewer of those in the future, but that policy seems to be a much harder sell than I'd think it would be.

* when the Mac team bragged they'd used a Cray to design their latest version (heat flow simulation IIRC), Cray humblebragged back that he'd used a Mac to design his latest version.

hwbunny
2 replies
22h0m

If we could've preserved his brain for the future.

pfdietz
1 replies
20h55m

In a bell jar?

hwbunny
0 replies
20h47m

In a digital rom.

f_allwein
1 replies
22h7m

Just thought how nice it is to read so many warm and heartfelt memories in all those obituaries. Wonder if it’ll be the same for current tech leaders/ maybe something for them to consider…

II2II
0 replies
21h1m

There will be some, either due to their current contributions or decisions they make later in life. It is just hard to see that in the present since news tends to (and has always tended to) focus upon controversy.

amirhirsch
2 replies
22h38m

RIP. I had the pleasure of messaging with him while developing a PDP-11/70 hardware replacement 17 years ago.

KerrAvon
1 replies
22h12m

Just curious, did you write that up anywhere? Sounds potentially interesting to this audience.

walterbell
1 replies
20h33m

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyLifeBits

> MyLifeBits is a life-logging experiment begun in 2001. It is a Microsoft Research project inspired by Vannevar Bush's hypothetical Memex computer system. The project includes full-text search, text and audio annotations, and hyperlinks. The "experimental subject" of the project is computer scientist Gordon Bell, and the project will try to collect a lifetime of storage on and about Bell.. For this, Bell has digitized all documents he has read or produced, CDs, emails, and so on. He continues to do so, gathering web pages browsed, phone and instant messaging conversations and the like more or less automatically. The book Total Recall describes the vision and implications for a personal, lifetime e-memory for recall, work, health, education, and immortality. In 2010, Total Recall was published in paperback. As of 2016, Bell was no longer using the wearable camera associated with the project. He described the rise of the smartphone as largely fulfilling Bush's vision of the Memex.

"Total Recall" (2009) by Gordon Bell, https://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Memory-Revolution-Everyt...

billylo
0 replies
18h46m

It's so humbling to understand the history and the ingenuity required to create these foundations. Amazing stuff.

fredsmith219
1 replies
18h8m

The same day he dies, Microsoft announces version control in Windows Explorer, which he originally bought to the file system in VMS. I know he worked on NT, I wonder why they didn’t introduce version control before now.

kreddor
0 replies
1h57m

I think NTFS already supports it? The recent announcement seems to be for native git support.

dcminter
0 replies
21h51m

As someone who attends a lot of meetings at the moment I smarted a bit reading that. I don't think any of them are "sewing circles" but still...

brian_herman
1 replies
22h27m

Black bar for Bell please?

brian_herman
0 replies
22h7m

Thanks Dang!

swozey
0 replies
20h22m

I went to Mountain View/SV/California for the first time maybe 5 years ago and the CHM was so much cooler than I expected. It made me incredibly envious to have grown up on the east coast in the 90s where none of my friends had a computer until the early-mid 2000s instead of CA. Everyone I knew online was from California for a LONG time. I feel like I missed out on so much cool stuff because I learned most things out of Barnes and Noble books that I couldn't afford instead of being enmeshed in the culture.

Rest in peace

sctb
0 replies
21h51m

I remember watching a Channel 9 video about a decade or so ago where they visited Bell and co at the MSR office in San Francisco. That's where Gordon wanted to be and so Microsoft opened an office for him. In the video he was wearing a video camera around his neck and speaking a bit about the MyLifeBits project, IIRC. Now that I'm middle-aged and my relationship to technology has been changing, I'm struck by the passion, curiosity, and engagement he continued to exhibit. Remarkable lifelong attitude.

redbell
0 replies
9h27m

As a side note, his personal page at https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/ doesn't seem to have been updated in more than ten years now. I believe it would make more sense to read "Gordon Bell (1934-2024)" instead of just "Gordon Bell".

pjmorris
0 replies
2h26m

I've always loved 'The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer system are those that aren't there.' -- Gordon Bell, as quoted in Jon Bentley's 'Programming Pearls.'

petesoper
0 replies
18h43m

Gordon was one of the founders of Encore Computer and my first encounter was in Mass at the point Hydra, Resolution, Foundation and the other component company acquisitions were melding together. I remember being gob smacked by Gordon having a little Vax as his PC and only later came the "well of course he does" realization. He was keen for us to get on to Arpanet and that happened before the end of 1984.

panick21_
0 replies
17h37m

I was just recently on a youtube trip listening to all his talks and interviews. Also read some stuff, But I need to get the 'Computer Engineering' book. And I love history, and he did so much both as a participant, analyst and historian. Defiantly want to learn even more.

Condolences to all who knew him.

mproud
0 replies
13h10m

TIL that’s why the black bar is at the top of the page.

hnthrowaway0328
0 replies
1d10h

I knew him through reading "Showstopper". What a loss!

faeyanpiraat
0 replies
19h49m

Breathing difficulties should never be the cause of death.

I hope we are going to conquer these "simple" causes in the next couple of years.

benreesman
0 replies
13h15m

"The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that are not there."

- Gordon Bell

Rest in Peace Legend.

I'm sure I join the entire community in wishing the best to his loved ones. He will be missed by all of us.

awestley
0 replies
19h8m

RIP. I loved the Computer Museum as a kid. It’s probably one of those thing that had a much bigger impact on me than I realize.

aap_
0 replies
22h15m

One of the most influential people in computer history. I'm glad I got to exchange a few mails with him a few years ago. RIP, GB.

Sontho
0 replies
11h17m

A legend gone.

Doctor-R
0 replies
20h47m

Some of his books are available in pdf on his website: https://gordonbell.azurewebsites.net/gbvita.htm

I used Computer Structures:Readings and Examples in an architecture class, and High Tech Ventures in an entrepreneurial class at Stanford.

I feel that Digital Equipment Corp entered a death spiral when he left.

As a volunteer, I was fortunate that I was able to work with him on some projects at the Computer History Museum. I wish that I had taped him discussing many of the artifacts in the exhibit, especially machines he worked on.

I created some training notebooks for CHM docents using chapters from Computer Structures, and the 1982 revised version.

ChuckMcM
0 replies
13h0m

I was really sad to hear he had passed. Since the first computer I ever programmed was a PDP-8/e I thought the guy who designed it must be a genius. When the Computer History Museum was being formed I gave them "1K" ($1024) and the person who collected that at the reception I was attending was Gwen Bell. I told her I admired Gordon's work and she called him over to say "Hi". We talked for about an hour about the PDP 8 and how the /E differed from the first 8 and the 8/I. Later, at a Vintage Computer Festival event Gordon was being honored and I worked with my Dad to gold plate an XR2242 front panel key which we then attached to a medal ribbon and presented to Gordon in a flip up Medal Presentation box. He got a great kick out of that.

Definitely one of my heroes.