Nathaniel Rochester (computer scientist)
| Nathaniel Rochester | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 14, 1919 |
| Died | June 8, 2001 (aged 82) |
| Occupation | Computer pioneer |
Nathaniel Rochester (January 14, 1919 – June 8, 2001) designed the IBM 701, wrote the first assembler and participated in the founding of the field of artificial intelligence.
Rochester received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941. He stayed on at MIT, working in the Radiation Laboratory for three years and then moved to Sylvania Electric Products where he was responsible for the design and construction of radar sets and other military equipment. His group built the arithmetic element for the Whirlwind I computer at MIT.
In 1948, Rochester moved to IBM where he designed the IBM 701, the first general purpose, mass-produced computer. He wrote the first symbolic assembler, which allowed programs to be written in short, readable commands rather than pure numbers or punch codes. He became the chief engineer of IBM's 700 series of computers.
In 1955, IBM organized a group to study pattern recognition, information theory and switching circuit theory, headed by Rochester. Among other projects, the group simulated the behaviour of abstract neural networks on an IBM 704 computer.
That summer John McCarthy, a young Dartmouth College mathematician, was also working at IBM. He and Marvin Minsky had begun to talk seriously about the idea of intelligent machines. They approached Rochester and Claude Shannon with a proposal for a conference on the subject. With the support of the two senior scientists, they secured $7,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a conference in the summer of 1956. The meeting, now known as the Dartmouth Conference, is widely considered the "birth of artificial intelligence."
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