Bob Bemer
Robert William Bemer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 8 February 1920 Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | 22 June 2004 (aged 84) Near Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Computer scientist, aerospace engineer |
| Known for | Contributions to ASCII standard, COBOL development, early time-sharing concept, Y2K problem identification |
Robert William Bemer (February 8, 1920 – June 22, 2004) was a distinguished computer scientist notable for his contributions while working at IBM during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Early life and education
Originating from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Bemer completed his studies at Cranbrook Kingswood School in 1936. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Albion College in 1940 and subsequently earned a certificate in aeronautical engineering from Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute in 1941.
Career
Bemer’s professional journey started as an aerodynamicist at Douglas Aircraft Company in 1941. He later joined the RAND Corporation in 1951, followed by positions at IBM in 1957, then at UNIVAC – Sperry Rand, and Bull in 1965. His career continued with roles at General Electric in 1970 and Honeywell in 1974.
He played a pivotal role in combining his own COMTRAN programming language with Grace Hopper’s FLOW-MATIC, which became foundational to the development of COBOL. As a member of the committee responsible for establishing the 1960 ASCII character encoding standard, Bemer introduced several characters including ESC, \, and {}, earning him recognition as The Father of ASCII. In the year 2000, he asserted that he originated the term octet during his time at Cie. Bull (1965–66) and also suggested the term hextet for groups of sixteen bits.
Bemer was an early advocate of the software factory model, which he elaborated on in his 1968 publication "The economics of program production." Among his innovations was the first published concept of time-sharing in 1957, as well as early identification of the potential issues related to the Year 2000 problem, documented as early as 1971. Together with Honeywell colleagues Eric Clamons and Richard Keys, he contributed to creating the Text Executive Programming Language (TEX).
During the late 1990s, Bemer developed a Y2K date conversion technique designed to resolve problems in legacy systems where source code was unavailable. This solution operated at runtime to modify date comparisons, ensuring accurate chronological ordering across century boundaries.
He preserved comprehensive archives covering early software development history on his website www.bobbemer.com.
Death
Bemer passed away from cancer at his residence near Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, in 2004 at the age of 84.
Further reading
- Interview transcript featuring Bob Bemer
- Step Aside, BT: The Pioneer of Links Insights from Bob Bemer on patent issues
- Biography emphasizing the ASCII car license plate
External links
- Pages with script errors
- Articles with short description
- Articles with hCards
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- 1920 births
- 2004 deaths
- American aerospace engineers
- Albion College alumni
- IBM employees
- People from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan
- Cranbrook Educational Community alumni
- Deaths from cancer in Texas
- American computer scientists