James Herbert Pomerene (June 22, 1920 – December 7, 2008) was an electrical engineer and computer pioneer.

Biography

Pomerene was born June 22, 1920 in

Yonkers, New York Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as en ...

. His father was Joel Pomerene and mother was Elsie Bower. He received the BS degree in electrical engineering from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

in 1942. In 1945 he married Edythe Schwenn and had three children. In 1946, he joined the Electronic Computer Project at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

(IAS) in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

under the leadership of

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...

. The project built a parallel stored program computer called the

IAS machine The IAS machine was the first electronic computer built at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. It is sometimes called the von Neumann machine, since the paper describing its design was edited by John von Neumann, a ...

that was the prototype for a number of machines such as the

MANIAC I __NOTOC__ The MANIAC I (''Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer Model I'') was an early computer built under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It was based on the von Neuma ...

, ORACLE, and

ILLIAC ILLIAC (Illinois Automatic Computer) was a series of supercomputers built at a variety of locations, some at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In all, five computers were built in this series between 1951 and 1974. Some more modern ...

series. Pomerene designed and implemented the adder portion of the arithmetic unit.Gilchrist, Bruce
"Remembering Some Early Computers, 1948-1960"
''Columbia University EPIC'', 2006, pp.7-9. Collaborating with engineers such as Bruce Gilchrist and Y.K. Wong, they invented a fast adder which incorporated a speed up technique for asynchronous adders reducing the time for additive carry-overs to propagate. This design was actually later incorporated in one commercial computer, the

Philco TRANSAC S-2000 Philco was one of the pioneers of transistorized computers. After the company developed the surface barrier transistor, which was much faster than previous point-contact types, it was awarded contracts for military and government computers. Comm ...

, introduced in 1957, the first commercial transistorized computer. Pomerene became chief engineer on the IAS computer project from 1951 to 1956. In Summer 1956, Pomerene joined the IBM Corporation in

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, where he and several others started the development of various electronic computer systems such as the

IBM 7030 The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three ...

and Harvest computers. He was appointed an

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achiev ...

in 1976. He held 37 patents when he retired from IBM in 1993. Pomerene was a Life Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

and a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

. He received the

IEEE Edison Medal The IEEE Edison Medal is presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical arts." It is the oldest medal in this fi ...

in 1993, and the Eckert-Mauchly Award in 2006. He died December 7, 2008 in

Chappaqua, New York Chappaqua ( ) is a hamlet and census-designated place in the town of New Castle, in northern Westchester County, New York, United States. It is approximately north of New York City. The hamlet is served by the Chappaqua station of the Metro ...

Selected papers

* Gilchrist, B.; Pomerene, J.; Wong, S.Y.
"Fast carry logic for digital computers"
''IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers'', EC-4 (Dec.1955), pp. 133–136. * Esterin, B.; Gilchrist, B.; Pomerene, J. H.
"A Note on High Speed Digital Multiplication"
''IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers'', vol. EC-5, p. 140 (1956).

Biography

Selected papers

References

Further reading