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| Smart Computing® Encyclopedia |
| Dunwell, Stephen W. | ||
| (1913 - 1994) Stephen W. Dunwell was a career IBM engineer. He also was primarily responsible for the development of the first supercomputer, the IBM 7030. Dunwell was born April 3, 1913, in Kalamazoo, Mich. Dunwell was in high school when he became interested in electronics; he designed, built, and operated an amateur radio station. After high school, Dunwell attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he majored in electrical engineering. In 1933, he entered an IBM program for student engineers in Endicott, N.Y. A year later, he accepted a full-time engineering position with IBM, and he remained with the company until his retirement in 1976. Soon after joining IBM, Dunwell designed and built a machine that sorted marked cards. With this machine, he demonstrated to IBM management the power of electronics in the evolution of punched-card machines. Dunwell also designed and built a switching device that Columbia University’s Wallace Eckert used in his experiments, which used punched-card machines in computations of the orbit of the moon. In 1938, IBM transferred Dunwell to its New York City world headquarters where he worked on the specifications and designs for future IBM products. During World War II, Dunwell became a member of the U.S. Army’s Security Agency where he worked in cryptography and code breaking using IBM machines. He was granted a direct commission when he joined the Security Agency and by the end of the war, he had attained the rank of Lt. Colonel. Dunwell received the Legion of Merit for his work with the Army in 1945. After the war, Dunwell returned to IBM and was assigned to the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) facility. While at the Poughkeepsie facility, he was involved in the specification and design of various calculating machines, including the IBM-502-A, the IBM-603, and the IBM-604. He also worked on a device known as the CPC (Card-Programmed Calculator), the IBM-650 Tape Processing Machine, and the IBM-702 and -705, both commercial data processing machines. In 1958, Dunwell was appointed director of Project Stretch, a research effort to expand transistor technology for scientific and commercial uses. Project Stretch’s goals were to develop components for transistorized computers, combine scientific and commercial capabilities into a single machine, and develop the standards to be used in the design of all future IBM computers. Among the standards that resulted were the 8-bit byte, a standard interface to attach peripheral devices, and an automatic error-correcting scheme. Project Stretch produced the IBM-7030. Although this machine never became a commercial success, its circuits, packaging, and cooling and diagnostic designs were the foundation of IBM’s successful lines of 7080 and 7090 systems. As a result of his work on Project Stretch and the resulting patents, Dunwell was presented with IBM’s Outstanding Invention Award. In 1966, Dunwell was promoted to IBM Fellow, an honor that gave him the freedom to pursue any research or development topic he desired. For the next 10 years, until his retirement in 1976, Dunwell developed time-sharing software and networks for the worldwide exchange of information. He also developed COURSEWRITER, a time-sharing product used for the computer-assisted instruction and training of IBM field engineers. In 1992, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical And Electronics Engineers) Computer Society presented Dunwell with the Computer Pioneer Award for “significant contributions to concepts and developments in the electronic computer field, which have clearly advanced the state of the art in computing.” The award was based on his Project Stretch work. In 1980, Dunwell and his wife, Julia McClure Dunwell, established a time-sharing company and computer laboratory to search for a computer programming language that could replace all languages in use at the time. This work kept Dunwell busy until the time of his death on March 21, 1994. | ||
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