Roy Nutt (October 20, 1930 – June 14, 1990) was an American businessman and computer pioneer. He was a co-creator of
Fortran[ As corrected June 22, 1990.] and co-founded
Computer Sciences Corporation.
Fortran
Born in
Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 41,793 at the 2020 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the ...
, Roy Nutt grew up in
Glastonbury, Connecticut. He graduated in 1953 with a
bachelor's degree in
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
from
Trinity College in
Hartford.
A pioneer in the fledgling software industry of the 1950s, Roy Nutt was a major contributor in the creation of
IBM's
FORTRAN, the first high-level scientific and engineering programming language. Part of the FORTRAN project's team, he was responsible for developing the computer command
FORMAT, which controls data for input and output.
Nutt also created an assembler for the IBM 704 mainframe that is today seen as the most successful individual programming effort of the 1950s.
SHARE
During this period, Roy Nutt met
Fletcher Jones when he joined with nineteen others from the aerospace industry to form the influential IBM user group known as
SHARE which developed
SOS
is a Morse code distress signal (), used internationally, that was originally established for maritime use. In formal notation is written with an overscore line, to indicate that the Morse code equivalents for the individual letters of "SOS" ...
, one of the first operating systems. Jones, as secretary of the group, became its national spokesman and their working relationship would later result in a business partnership.
CSC
Roy Nutt had become a widely respected
computer programmer
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
for
United Aircraft Corp. in
East Hartford, Connecticut, where he developed the
Symbolic Assembly Program for the IBM 704. He left in 1959 to team up with Fletcher Jones to establish
Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in Los Angeles.
Jones, who ran the business and marketing end of things, obtained a contract from
Honeywell that gave their business profitability and respect within the industry. Nutt was responsible for building Honeywell the first commercial
compiler (
FACT
A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...
) and oversaw the company's major 1961 entry into the space industry when they obtained a contract to support the
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Flight Operations Facility.
Within four years of its founding, CSC became the largest software company in the United States. Taking their business Public company with an
IPO listed on the
American Stock Exchange. By the end of the 1960s, CSC was listed on the
New York Stock Exchange and had operations in Canada, the United Kingdom, (Germany), Italy, and in
The Netherlands.
Later years
In later years, Roy Nutt used some of his wealth to benefit Trinity College. He set up an endowment fund for a professorship and donated money to assist in the construction of the college's engineering and computing building. Trinity College honored him in May 2012 when they renamed the building the Roy Nutt Mathematics, Engineering & Computer Science Center.
Roy Nutt died of lung cancer in
Seattle, Washington on June 14, 1990.
References
00
Further reading
* Pollock, John P. (1998) ''Fletcher Jones: An America Success Story''. Los Angeles: Pollock.
External links
Computer Sciences Corporation website with company historyTrinity College ME & CSC dedication program containing a short biography of Roy Nutt (by Micah Nutt)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nutt, Roy
1930 births
1990 deaths
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American philanthropists
American computer businesspeople
Businesspeople in software
Fortran
People from Glastonbury, Connecticut
People from Marlborough, Massachusetts
Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni
Deaths from lung cancer