Gordon Bell RIP

Paul Ceruzzi forwarded the NY Times obituary widely, on Thursday May 23 (today).   https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/technology/c-gordon-bell-dead.html

Gordon Bell, 2nd design engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the Computer History Museum, passed away last Friday, May 17, aged 89.  Paul's addendum note mentioned Bell's work with CHM: (Among other accomplishments, Gordon was an early supporter of the Computer History Museum, which started at a DEC building, and began with pieces of the Whirlwind computer rescued from scrap (correct me if this is wrong).) 

Len Shustek augmented the note with several more:                      https://computerhistory.org/blog/computer-history-museum-celebrating-35-years/        https://computerhistory.org/blog/len-shustek-a-man-with-a-vision-for-a-museum/         https://d1yx3ys82bpsa0.cloudfront.net/atchm/documents/Personal_Reflections_on_the_History_of_the_Computer_History_Museum_09-26-14.pdf                                https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/out-of-a-closet-the-early-years-of-years-of-the-computer-x-museums/  

The NY Times article was well-done, citing Bell's continual battles with the dogmatic overbearing Ken Olson, including a near-fatal heart attack in 1983 on a ski trip.   The second corrected article listed his first wife, Gwen, and noted accurately that she and he had co-created the predecessor to the Computer History Museum.

I thought back to the first time I met Gordon, which was on an interview trip to DEC in January 1965, courtesy of a Stanford classmate.   I was unimpressed by the old building, the PDP-8 they showed me, and in fact by Gordon and Ken themselves.   And I was very unimpressed at the time by their very small revenue base--they didn't share the numbers other than to boast that they expected to clear $10M in revenue when the books closed on 1964.  Years later, the number is known--$10.9M.  1965, with the PDP-8 selling, was just $14.98M.   Computers?   They had delivered less than 200 (actually more like 125) machines in eight years, selling just over one per month prior to the PDP-8.   True, they'd had some success with a run-time controller (PDP-5), but they didn't themselves consider it a computer.

I was working for HP Colorado Springs, the oscilloscope division of HP--the doormat of HP, with the slowest growth rate, lowest profit, and hardest competitor (Tektronix), and our revenues for 1964 were $10M, while HP totals were $128M (and Tektronix $75M).   I was quite willing to walk away from the 'scope business, but not into another flailing organization.   So, with ZERO foresight, I passed on DEC.

And then, circa 1975/76, our HP Logic Analyzers were "kickin' butt" and Gordon wanted to talk about them in Maynard.  The result was that I put five designers in Maynard for several months, to debug a new design with "Virtual Address eXtension, which debuted in 1978 as the DEC VAX-780.   The nub of the question was, with HP now firmly in the computer business, what were five HP designers doing in the DEC R&D Lab, helping debug a machine that would compete heavily with HP?   I had to get permission from HP's Board of Directors and Executive Committee to do this act of seeming treason.   Gordon had to do the same with his Board, swearing that the HP guys were not spies for the HP computer group.  The argument that I used was that we were Instrument folk who needed to measure the best and most innovative computer designs anywhere, and if we had to be at HP competitors, so be it.  Winning hand!

So, that re-kindled our connection, and a year later, Digital decided to bring a division to Colorado Springs.  Gordon and I met in the Springs, and he liked our 'story', so the Disc Drive division came to town, and I got to see him periodically.   

The NY Times mentioned Gordon's 1983 heart attack in Colorado--it was while skiing, not in the Springs.  I had suffered a much less severe heart attack in Salzburg while touring about Logic Analysis in 1977, so again we had something in common to discuss.  In retrospect today, we each have gotten four+ decades that easily might not have been ours to enjoy, so much to be grateful for on that account alone..

I mentioned (ironically just two weeks ago) in a post about Bill Johnson at DEC, that he and I conspired to do joint experiments with DEC and HP about Virtual Computer Collaboration.  The two VPs that I told the HP Exec Council that I knew, did not include Gordon, since he quit DEC for good after his heart attack.  I knew Bob Glorioso, who had taken his place, plus of course, BJ.

The next time Gordon and I crossed paths was another seven years, when he and his wife Gwen got the original Computer History Museum underway in Boston, and I was conscripted to help.  In fact, I wound up as HP's token member of the second "Computer Trivia Bowl" as a teammate with Bill Gates in 1990, who later penned a small monograph about it.  And, indeed, there is a video (I did a perfectly awful job that night).  https://www.google.com/search?q=computer+bowl+2&sca_esv=2d1299fed1ffcbfc&biw=2425&bih=1294&sxsrf=ADLYWIL96UPrCMQh6DJ_XV06qqr2S_iAew%3A1716564271240&ei=L7FQZryoDtqt0PEPzLmY8Aw&ved=0ahUKEwj8-_uczKaGAxXaFjQIHcwcBs4Q4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=computer+bowl+2&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiD2NvbXB1dGVyIGJvd2wgMjIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRirAjIFECEYqwIyBRAhGKsCMgUQIRifBTIFECEYnwVI3yFQAFjWHXAAeACQAQCYAXKgAdwJqgEEMTQuMbgBA8gBAPgBAZgCD6ACqQrCAgQQIxgnwgIKEC4YgAQYQxiKBcICERAuGIAEGJECGNEDGMcBGIoFwgILEAAYgAQYkQIYigXCAg0QLhiABBhDGNQCGIoFwgIQEC4YgAQYsQMYQxiDARiKBcICEBAAGIAEGLEDGEMYgwEYigXCAgoQIxiABBgnGIoFwgIOEAAYgAQYkQIYyQMYigXCAgsQABiABBiSAxiKBcICChAAGIAEGEMYigXCAhEQABiABBiRAhixAxjJAxiKBcICDhAAGIAEGJECGLEDGIoFwgINEAAYgAQYsQMYQxiKBcICCBAAGIAEGLEDwgINEAAYgAQYsQMYFBiHAsICBRAAGIAEwgIKEAAYgAQYFBiHAsICCxAuGIAEGMcBGK8BwgIHEAAYgAQYCsICBhAAGBYYHsICChAAGBYYChgeGA_CAggQABgWGB4YD5gDAJIHBDE0LjGgB66pAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:3576871f,vid:GJbtdrMbPK4,st:0 

Nonetheless, Gwen invited me to join their Board, which lasted over two instantiations and 28 years, an incredible privilege.   Gordon was a peripatetic and omnipresent board member throughout.  So, in a sense, I've worked with Gordon over nearly 60 years--hardly seems possible.

The sequel to all of this was that Gwen, serving as ACM President Emeritus, beseeched me to consider running for ACM President in 1996, and despite my employer's voiced dissent, I ran and won, which opened doors and avenues for my later life that I could only have dreamed, let alone imagined.  So for the two of them, my life has been HEAVILY impacted.    Gordon remarried fifteen years ago; Gwen, severely ill for years, is still living to the best of my knowledge.  

THANK YOU, GORDON, and RIP