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Domain: bobbemer.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bobbemer.com.
Comments · 21
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Bob Bemer birthed backslash
Wikipedia claims that ASCII grew the backslash [\] specifically to support ALGOL's
Here's one of the two sources that Wikipedia cites, straight from the inventor of the backslash: HOW ASCII GOT ITS BACKSLASH citing his book [ R.W.Bemer, "A view of the history of the ISO character code", Honeywell Computer J. 6, No. 4, 274-286, 1972 ]
"I had called a joint meeting of IBM, SHARE, and GUIDE, to regularize the IBM 6-bit set to become the standard BCD Interchange Code [76]. Frequency studies of symbol occurrence had been prepared, particularly from ALGOL programs. The meeting of 1961 July 6 produced general agreement on a basic 60-64-character set, which included the two square brackets and the reverse slant, which was chosen in conjunction with "/" to yield 2-character representations for the AND and OR of early ALGOL. This is reflected in the set I proposed to ANSI X3.2 on 1961 September 18."
(Note: I had put the backslash in position 5/15. It enabled the ALGOL "and" to be "/\" and the "or" to be "\/".)
Apparently he also invented ten other ASCII codepoints (called himself the father of ASCII), timesharing, escape sequences, the Y2K bug, word processors... and COBOL.
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Re:But ASCII is binary after all...The true problem is that, right now, we're stuck in a transition where there is not yet an accepted binary standard. So yes, right now there is a problem in debugging. But give it a few years, and (hopefully!) there won't be.
However (as I tried to emphasize), ASCII is binary too. It's not that binary is inherently more difficult to debug. It's that we need a binary standard as universal as ASCII has become.
Imagine debugging before in the 1960's, when ASCII wasn't standardized. We forget about those times now, because ASCII has been there for nearly 50 years. But go ahead, take a look.
Believe it or not, there were over 60 binary text standards in use before ASCII. I think we should be thanking Bob Bemer (the father of ASCII) a whole lot more often.
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Re:His websiteHah! Some website. Looks like he hasn't been updating it. It doesn't say I'm DEAD yet.
Well, at least one page's title gets pretty close.
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How the media covered Bob Bemer's death
Mod my down if you want to do so, because I am about to complain about submission rejection, but for all I care, the editors are not looking carefully at submissions.
I submitted this at lunch time yesterday (that is about 24 hours ago!), as "Bob Bemer, inventor of ASCII, dead at 84", and included a link to Bob Bemer's web page, and some of the things he said helped create, like:
- helped create COBOL
- coined the words COBOL and CODASYL
- invented the ESCape sequence
- created the PICTURE clause
- helped create and standardize the ASCII character set
- put the backslash into the ASCII set
- helped create the 8-bit per byte standard
The interesting part in my submission wa how some media covered it. A radio station here (Toronto) said: like "made computers understand letters in addition to numbers" (reference to ASCII) and that he invented "the escape key".
Some of the miswording for the non-tech media can be found in Washington Post article that says: "who helped invent the language used by most of the world's computers to translate text to numbers", and "He helped create the standard measurement of eight bits per byte" and "... escape sequence, which allows a computer to break from one language and enter another".
The Register covers his death with an ASCI Art figure. How appropriate.
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Few acheivements !
He was the father of ASCII
He was the father of COBOL
First published the time-sharing concept
First predicted the Y2K problem
Original paper on ESCape charecter -
Re:Some cool stuff can be found here
I have been reading some documents on his site, and this two are a must:
about managers in computer industry (it reminds me of my bosses) and
when it's to cheap for the government.
And talking about ASCII, and (dead) keys, now I know that the ALT Key was pattented by IBM... who (apparently) lost a patent litigation on this issue.
Worth reading! -
Re:Some cool stuff can be found here
I have been reading some documents on his site, and this two are a must:
about managers in computer industry (it reminds me of my bosses) and
when it's to cheap for the government.
And talking about ASCII, and (dead) keys, now I know that the ALT Key was pattented by IBM... who (apparently) lost a patent litigation on this issue.
Worth reading! -
Re:Some cool stuff can be found here
I have been reading some documents on his site, and this two are a must:
about managers in computer industry (it reminds me of my bosses) and
when it's to cheap for the government.
And talking about ASCII, and (dead) keys, now I know that the ALT Key was pattented by IBM... who (apparently) lost a patent litigation on this issue.
Worth reading! -
Re:Some cool stuff can be found here
I have been reading some documents on his site, and this two are a must:
about managers in computer industry (it reminds me of my bosses) and
when it's to cheap for the government.
And talking about ASCII, and (dead) keys, now I know that the ALT Key was pattented by IBM... who (apparently) lost a patent litigation on this issue.
Worth reading! -
Some cool stuff can be found here
www.bobbemer.com (official website)
And the google cache for the impending slashdotting
Among the more interesting tidbits is that he coined the word COBOL -
His website
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His website
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Re:XML 1.1 incompatibilityI have a lot of respect for ERH. As you say,he's written some really good books, including the absolute best XML-for-beginners book. And I sort of agree with him that a 1.1 spec is premature. But I think he's kind of gone overboard on this issue. Some points:
- Although this revision was partially driven by IBM (they needed some changes to do XML in EBCDIC, there are other problems that people wanted to address. ERH seems to think this is all a case of IBM throwing its weight around -- which is just not true.
- ERH blames this hassle over an "obsolete" coding on IBM's corporate arrogance. In this, he follows the common wisdom that IBM just ignored the whole EBCDIC/ASCII issue until the PC revolution made a switch to standard character sets unavoidable. I actually believed this stuff myself, until I stumbled onto the real story. Which is that ASCII (which was invented at IBM!) was supposed to be the standard for IBM mainframes, but a series of bureaucratic screwups and bad decisions prevented this from happening.
Yeah, IBM, should have made the change anyway. But we all how hard it is to change a technical direction once a lot of effort has been put into it. Look at the groddy UI at Slashdot. Look at all the web presence providers (including mine!) who won't upgrade to a taint-safe version of Perl because it would break too much of their code. The examples are endless. You may not sympathize, but you damn well should understand.
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If you read the 1.1 spec carefully (I recommend the version with highlighted revisions) you'll realize that 1.1 is in no way a replacement for 1.0. People with a lot of 1.0-compliant XML and who don't need to read any 1.1-compliant XML can simply ignore the new spec, if they choose. The 1.1 spec very clearly states that nothing has changed in terms of what parsers should and should not do with XML 1.0. Provided, of course, people remembered to head all their XML files with the mandatory processing instruction:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
And if you've read ERH's books, you know to do that!
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Bob BemerBob Bemer is credited with the first world-wide publication of the Y2k problem.
R.W.Bemer, "What's the Date?", Editorial, Honeywell Computer J. 5, No. 4, 205-208, 1971
Here is a funny quote from him:Q: So whom do you blame?
He has a rather impressive list of accomplishment to go along with those tidbits, including prior art for the British Telecom patent fiasco.
A: Richard Nixon.
Q: What did he do?
A:I proposed a national computer year back in 1970. I wanted to model it after the IGY [the International Geophysical Year was from July 1957 to December 1958]. I could see that people were not prepared for the influx of computer usage that was sure to come. I thought that if we all put our minds to it and planned ahead a little bit, maybe it would be easier. Year 2000 was just one of the issues we would have addressed.
President Nixon was very suspicious of computers, though, and wouldn't sign off on it. Without his proclamation we couldn't do it. I think he'll go down in history along with King Canute.
A pretty neat dude. -
Bob BemerBob Bemer is credited with the first world-wide publication of the Y2k problem.
R.W.Bemer, "What's the Date?", Editorial, Honeywell Computer J. 5, No. 4, 205-208, 1971
Here is a funny quote from him:Q: So whom do you blame?
He has a rather impressive list of accomplishment to go along with those tidbits, including prior art for the British Telecom patent fiasco.
A: Richard Nixon.
Q: What did he do?
A:I proposed a national computer year back in 1970. I wanted to model it after the IGY [the International Geophysical Year was from July 1957 to December 1958]. I could see that people were not prepared for the influx of computer usage that was sure to come. I thought that if we all put our minds to it and planned ahead a little bit, maybe it would be easier. Year 2000 was just one of the issues we would have addressed.
President Nixon was very suspicious of computers, though, and wouldn't sign off on it. Without his proclamation we couldn't do it. I think he'll go down in history along with King Canute.
A pretty neat dude. -
Re:or militia movementHere's A Brief History Character Codes.
And here's an explanation from Bob Bemer.
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Bob Bemer says mark of the beast and ASCII...
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Father of.... lots! :)Two words.... BAD. ASS.
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Father of.... lots! :)Two words.... BAD. ASS.
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Re:Old-Timers strike back
Off-topic? Moderator, follow the link.
Anyway, here is more on Mr. Bemer for others who do not follow the link:
At Lockheed, he devised the first computerized 3-D dynamic perspective,
prelude to today's computer animation.
At IBM, he developed
PRINT I (the first load-and-go computer method),
FORTRANSIT (the first major proof of intercomputer portability,
and the second FORTRAN compiler),
Commercial Translator (a COBOL input), and
XTRAN (an ALGOL predecessor).
In 1957 March he was the first to describe commercial timesharing,
which you now see as the Worldwide Web.
In 1959 his internal IBM memo proposed word processing.
The Identification and Environment Divisions of COBOL are due to him,
as is the Picture Clause, which could have avoided the Year 2000 problem
if used correctly.
He coined the terms "COBOL", "CODASYL", and "Software Factory".
He was the major force in developing ASCII (contributing 6 characters --
ESCape (see that key), FS, GS, RS, US, and the backslash). He invented the
escape sequence and registry concept, and is called the "Father of ASCII".
He wrote the original scope and program of work for international and
national computer standards, and chaired the international committee for
programming language standards for eleven years.
He was Program Chairman for ACM 70, promoter of National Computer
Year (when the Y2K problem should have been solved), and edited the
proceedings as the book "Computers and Crisis".
Three Pioneer Days have honored him -- SHARE, COBOL, and FORTRAN.
As editor of the Honeywell Computer Journal (the first A4-size publication
[1971] in the U.S.) he innovated fiche-of-the-issue and multimedia publishing.
He has published more than 110 articles in technical journals.
In 1995 he received the Albion College Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In 2000 he was named in the Delta Tau Delta "Rainbow" as one of the "100
Most Influential Delts of the 20th Century".
He is recognized as the first person in the world to publish warnings of the
Year 2000 problem -- first in 1971, and again in 1979. -
Re:Old-Timers strike back
I can imagine grandpa's voice.. The fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached..
But...
Mr. Bemer really does have a fascinating background. Read a bit about him here.
