Heinz Lienhard (18 June 1937 – 12 May 2020) was a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

electrical engineer and an inventor.''Heinz Lienhard-Manz''.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20 May 2020, p. 6. Retrieved 5 July 2022. He was inventor of current measuring equipment''Inventor Heinz Lienhard''.
patents.justia.com. Retrieved 5 July 2022. and developer of the programming language PORTAL.

Life

Heinz Lienhard graduated in electrical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

) in 1961. He started his professional career at Contraves-Oerlikon, a Swiss weapons manufacturer. There, a digital computer had been developed. Lienhard joined this company to write programs for the computer, called CORA 1. Then, he moved to the US to work for

AMPEX Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name ''AMPEX'' is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excell ...

Redwood City, California Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area of Northern California, approximately south of San Francisco and northwest of San Jose, California, San Jose. The city's population was 84,292 accor ...

, where he did research on magnetic thin-film memories. Simultaneously, he studied statistics at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, where he obtained a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

degree. After moving back to Switzerland, he joined

Landis+Gyr Landis+Gyr AG is a publicly listed, multinational corporation operating in over 30 countries and headquartered in Cham, Switzerland. Landis+Gyr makes meters and related software for electricity, gas and water utilities. History Landis+Gyr was f ...

, a Swiss company based in

Zug Zug (Standard German: , Alemannic German: ; ; ; ; )Named in the 16th century. is the largest List of cities in Switzerland, town and capital of the Swiss canton of Zug. Zug is renowned as a hub for some of the wealthiest individuals in the wor ...

. With his team at the central laboratories he developed metering equipment for electric utilities and debit cards for phone companies based on

holography Holography is a technique that allows a wavefront to be recorded and later reconstructed. It is best known as a method of generating three-dimensional images, and has a wide range of other uses, including data storage, microscopy, and interfe ...

, called ''Phonocards''. Starting in 1974, he conceived a new programming language based on Pascal. Together with his colleague Rudolf Schild, he optimized Pascal for real-time applications and multi-processor systems. Their resulting language was called ''Process-Oriented Real-Time Algorithmic Language'' (Portal). Together with the

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (, EPFL) is a public university, public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland". Like its sister institution E ...

, an application for the Bobst Group was implemented.Heinz Lienhard et al.: ''Simulation and process-control with parallel processes as implemented in PORTAL.'' Proc. of the IMACS Conference 1979, Sorrento, Italy. In 1993, Lienhard founded the company ''Ivyteam AG'' in Zug. Ivyteam was specialized to model business processes.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lienhard, Heinz 20th-century Swiss engineers ETH Zurich alumni 1937 births 2020 deaths