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Computer Pioneer Bob Bemer Dies

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the riderless-horse dept.

tpconcannon writes "Bob Bemer, the man who helped introduce the backslash as well as the escape key to computing, has passed away at his home at the age of 78. He also helped develop ASCII during the 60's at IBM. More interesting is that he predicted the Y2K bug all the way back in 1971!"

7 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. He was 84, not 78 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    And I posted this yesterday.

  2. His website by NearlyHeadless · · Score: 5, Informative

    His website is here. There are a lot of interesting tidbits on his history page.

    1. Re:His website by orkysoft · · Score: 5, Informative

      And if you read that, you'd know he invented the escape sequence, rather than just a key on your keyboard. The website hardly mentions the key, it mentions the concept of the escape sequence. That the ESC key is used to activate terminal escape sequences, or the backslash (which he also introduced into ASCII) is used to activate C-like escape sequences, isn't as relevant as the concept of the escape sequence itself.

      --

      I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
  3. Some cool stuff can be found here by ErichTheWebGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    --
    bash: rtfm: command not found
  4. Re:The Y2K Bug? by MarkRebuck · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Y2K bug was NOT a hoax. It was a valid problem that was (for the most part) solved in time. Big difference.

  5. His Exact words on Y2K !! by phreakv6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ''Don't drop the first two digits. The program may well fail from ambiguity in the Year 2000.''

    He wrote this in his article "Time and the Computer" way back in the 70's.

    --
    fifteen jugglers, five believers
  6. It's escape CHARACTER, not key by karnat10 · · Score: 5, Informative


    he defined the concept of using a special character to "escape" from one character set to another, and proposed to use the backslash for this (which hadn't existed in character sets until then).

    the escape key has nothing to do with this!

    thanks, slashdot editors, for misinforming people