Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dead At 92, Business Computing Pioneer David Caminer

Posted by timothy on from the 92-and-holding dept.

Brooklyn Bob points out this fascinating obituary of David Caminer, the first systems analyst. "The tea company he worked for developed their own hardware and software — in 1951! Quoting New Scientist: 'In today's terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald's had invented the Internet.'"

1 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. What on earth would they do with this computer? by ShooterNeo · · Score: 0, Troll

    What sort of calculations could possibly be worth the expense of building an early computer to do them with? That's one thing I have wondered about : these machines had about as much memory as a sheet of notebook paper, and were glacially slow at calculations. What kind of tasks could be worth the expense of building one?