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Chester Gordon BellAmerican electrical engineer, computer engineer and manager
Date of Birth: 19.08.1934
Country:  USA |
Content:
- Gordon Bell: Computer Visionary and Pioneer
- Career at Digital Equipment Corporation
- Carnegie Mellon University and Return to DEC
- Entrepreneurial Pursuits and Policy Advisor
- Microsoft Research and MyLifeBits
- Death
- Bell's Law of Computer Classes
Gordon Bell: Computer Visionary and Pioneer
Early Life and EducationChester Gordon Bell was born in Kirksville, Missouri, on May 19, 1934. Raised in a family business that repaired appliances and electrical wiring, Bell developed a keen interest in technology at a young age.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science (1956) and Master of Science (1957) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bell received a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Technology in New South Wales (now UNSW) in Australia. There, he taught computer design, programmed one of the first Australian-built computers, and published his first academic paper.
Upon returning to the US, Bell joined the Speech Communication Group in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) under Professor Ken Stevens, where he developed the first program for encoding speech.
Career at Digital Equipment Corporation
In 1960, DEC co-founders Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson hired Bell to design the PDP-1's input-output subsystem, which included the first universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART). As an architect for the PDP-4 and PDP-6, Bell's work focused on processor registers, PDP-5 and PDP-11 architecture (Unibus).
Carnegie Mellon University and Return to DEC
After leaving DEC in 1966, Bell became a faculty member in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. However, he returned to DEC in 1972 as Vice President of Engineering, overseeing the development of VAX, the company's most successful computer.
Entrepreneurial Pursuits and Policy Advisor
In 1983, Bell left DEC due to health issues and founded Encore Computer, which developed one of the first shared-memory multi-microprocessor computers with cache structure monitoring.
He also served as Vice President of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the 1980s and led the interagency team that managed the National Research and Education Network (NREN). In 1987, Bell established the ACM Gordon Bell Prize to encourage research in massively parallel computing systems.
Microsoft Research and MyLifeBits
In 1995, Bell joined Microsoft Research as a founding member and Fellow. As part of the MyLifeBits project, he digitized a vast archive of personal documents, photographs, and sounds to explore the concept of automatic life logging.
Death
Gordon Bell passed away on May 17, 2024, from aspiration pneumonia at his home in Coronado, California, at the age of 89.
Bell's Law of Computer Classes
In 1972, Bell formulated the Bell's Law of Computer Classes to explain the evolution of computing systems. He proposed that technological advancements give rise to a new computer class approximately every decade, each catering to distinct needs. Each new class becomes a quasi-independent industry, including mainframes, minicomputers, personal computers, and mobile smartphones. Bell predicted future classes such as home and terrestrial networks.
