Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 96
OCR for page 97
JEAN HOWARD FELKER
CLEAN HowARD FELKER, a retired vice-presiclent of AT&T Bell
Laboratories, cried on February 27, 1994. He had been a
member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1974.
Born in Centralia, Illinois, on March 14, 1919, Felker
received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering
from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in June
1941. He worked briefly for Emerson Electric Company and
then taught mathematics at a training school for naval recruits.
Commissioner! in October 1942 as a second lieutenant in the
Signal Corps, he went to England to learn racier at the Military
College of Science. After a four-month tour he was returned
to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to write and edit radar
manuals until mustering out in 1945.
In December 1945 Felker joined Bell Laboratories at the
Whippany, New Jersey, location in the Military Systems
Laboratory. In 1948 he received three point-contact
transistors, the first of a meager trickle allocatecl to that
laboratory. By late 1950 he tract demonstrated, with such
devices, all the basic logic circuits of a digital computer,
operating at a one megahertz rate, and had described in
memoranda the architecture of a computer built on such
elements. He hack already clubbed this computer TRADIC
Transistor Digital Computer.
1 91 9-1 994
BY BROCKWAY MCMILLAN
97
OCR for page 98
98
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
By 1951 Felker had clemonstrated serial adders and multipli-
ers and delay-line storage registers, all operating at one
megahertz. In his notebooks of that time can be found prelimi-
nary analyses of bombsight and gun-laying computers. He had
already concluded that a digital bombsight, as distinct from a
gun controller, wouIcl not need a magnetic drum the only mass
storage medium then at hand because of the relative simplicity
of its ballistic tables. By late 1951 he had discussed with col-
leagues the feasibility of building a flyable model of a bombsight.
Drawing on this work, Bell Laboratories contracted with the
Air Force in 1953 to design and develop a solicI-state digital com-
puter. The specific objective was to test ("clemonstrate," said the
optimists) feasibility for tactical applications. The project off~cial-
ly adopted the name TRADIC, and Felker was put in charge.
Phase I was completed, at some effort, in one year. In that year it
consumed the whole factory output of point-contact transistors-
some 5,000. With its cathode-ray displays, this primitive computer
clemonstratec3 to the skeptics in the Air Force that digital ma-
chines could simulate the continuous actions of analog crevices.
Phase I led at once to TRADTC Phase IT the flyable mode! of
a digital bombsight. Using the basic circuits and architecture of
Phase I, with consultation provided by Felker's laboratory, a
group experienced in the design of the analog bombsight
provided the final product. The airborne environment was a
harsh one for point-contact transistors, but flight tests were
ultimately successful.
Formally, Felker and his pioneering colleagues faced in Phase
I of TRAI)IC such questions as: synchronous or nonsynchro-
nous? (answer: synchronous); binary or decimal? (answer:
binary); magnetic memory or semiconductor? (answer: for a tac-
tical computer with a fixed program, transistor registers).
Actually, these major design decisions were all founded on Felk-
er's notes and memoranda of 1951 and earlier. They governed
in Phase lI, and the resulting architecture was basic to Phase ITI.
As fastjunction transistors became available, Felker convinced
the Air Force to undertake Phase Ill. This was a general-purpose
digital computer with a magnetic-core memory, taking its pro-
gram input from plug boards. Scaled to the capacity of the
OCR for page 99
TEAN HOWARD FELKER
99
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Whirlwind computer,
model III occupied a case about the size of an office filing cabi-
net, contained 100,000 transistors, and consumed 50 watts. For a
year it did general computing at Bell Laboratories in the military
development laboratory, before delivery to the Air Force.
In 1955 Felker turned to a new assignment to establish an
organization for planning digital transmission services to be of-
fered by the Bell System, for planning the associated digital
systems, and for developing data processing systems to automate
clerical and engineering functions common throughout the Bell
System. By 1959 the latter function had evolved to the point that
a separate organization was created to automate those functions
suitable for general-purpose computers. Felker then moved to
AT&T headquarters to become transmission engineer and later
assistant chief engineer, of the AT&T Company. In 1962 he trans-
ferred to the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company as
vice-president of operations. In the latter position he was a mem-
ber of the board of directors and of its executive committee.
Felker retired from the Bell System in 1969 and set up in
private consulting practice. In March 1971 he returned to Bell
Laboratories as vice-president in charge of business information
systems. In 1979 Bell Laboratories appointed him vice-presiclent
for software and processor technologies. He retired in May 1981.
The Institute of Electrical Engineers honored Felker as a fel-
low in 1959. The National Academy of Engineering elected him
to membership in 1973, citing him for "design of the first transis-
torized digital computer en cl for the engineering of digital
systems." He was a founding director of Bellcomm, the systems
engineering organization that served the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration for the moon landings and thereafter,
and was a director of the Colonial Life Insurance Company and
its successors for some twenty-five years.
It is clear from scraps of memoir that, from boyhood, Felk-
er was both a practical tinkerer with things mechanical or
electrical, and a dreamer. As an engineer, he was at once an
ingenious inventor and a rational and imaginative planner.
His sixteen patents range from transistor logic circuits to com
OCR for page 100
100
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
puter and memory systems. His many published articles cover
a similar range, from techniques for logic circuit design to the
basic principles underlying the organization of TRADIC III.
In all matters, Jean Felker was an original thinker. He heard
his own drum literally in at least one instance. I recall his
amusement at the inability of the army drill instructors to re-
form his shambling gait. Neither in his engineering nor in his
private life did he accept conventional wisdom without sup-
porting evidence. He respected facts. A quiet iconoclast with a
sharp sense of humor, indeed in many ways a determined
nonconformist, he was not a revolutionary. When he chose his
own way he did so with reason and good humor, and he did
not impose it on others.
Jean Felker had an extraordinary sensitivity to and
understanding of the feelings and needs of the people with
whom he dealt. During the three extended periods, separate in
time and in context, that I worked closely with him, I never saw
him use this remarkable talent to any but constructive ends. He
was never manipulative, always tactful, considerate, and humane.
lean had a restless spirit. During his first brief retirement,
he began painting with oils. The products I have seen are
large abstractions, exactly geometric, complex in their
symmetries, and rendered with exquisite precision in
beautifully controlled textures and soft colors. He continued
this hobby for many years. Restless also in mind, he was an
omnivorous reader, an acute observer of the contemporary
scene, and a student of history. Upon his second retirement,
he bought a historic dwelling on the Delaware Canal. Soon,
however, he set about to plan a permanent home in the rolling
hills of nearby Durham, Pennsylvania. The construction and
landscaping of this estate occupied him thereafter, and it is in
this house that he died.
OCR for page 101
Representative terms from entire chapter:
digital computer
