Chester Gordon Bell, who pioneered the era of more powerful personal computers in smaller and more portable frames in the 1960s, died on May 17 at the age of 89.
The New York Times, which first reported on Bell's death Tuesday (May 21), quoted his family, saying in a statement that he died of pneumonia at his home in Coronado, California.
Bell was survived by his first wife, Gwen Druyor, his second wife, Sheridan Sinclaire-Bell, and two children he shared with Druyor, a stepdaughter, and four grandchildren.
Who Was C Gordon Bell?
Chester Gordon Bell, a veteran engineer whose work helped create personal computers, has died aged 89.https://t.co/hravjpSAb9
— Silicon Republic (@siliconrepublic) May 22, 2024
Bell was born in 1934 in Kirksville, Missouri, to Chester Bell, an electrician and appliance store owner, and Lola Gordon, a grade school teacher.
Due to a heart complication at age seven, Bell spent his confinement delving into electronics and assisting his father in his business, becoming a professional electrician at age 12.
Bell obtained a master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1957 and soon after received a Fulbright scholarship from the University of New South Wales in Australia. He then became the university's first instructor in its graduate course in computer design.
He met Druyor while teaching in Sydney. They married in 1959 and founded the Digital Computer Museum in Boston in 1979.
Bell and Druyor divorced in 2002, while the Digital Computer Museum's collection was eventually incorporated into the Computer History Museum in California's Bay Area.
Bell attempted to obtain a PhD at MIT but never pursued it. He then worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, a rival of IBM, aiming to develop smaller, more affordable computers.
Despite his significant contributions to the company, including the development of the PDP-8, which Gizmodo cited as the world's first commercially successful microcomputer, he left DEC in 1983 because, as an engineer, he was more interested in creating things than researching.
Bell's Legacy
After Digital, Bell founded Encore Computer and Ardent Computer. He then entered the world of public policy when he joined the National Science Foundation in 1986 and eventually got involved in the early development of the Internet, which was called the National Research and Education Network at the time.
A year later, in 1987, he sponsored the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for his efforts in developing parallel computing.
Bell eventually moved to Silicon Valley in the 1990s to become an angel investor and an adviser for Microsoft, and joined its research facility full-time in 1995.
At Microsoft, he worked on MyLifebits, a database designed to capture every piece of information about his life in cloud-based digital software.
Bell was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1991 for his most outstanding achievement-transitioning the size of computers from room-sized machines to ones that could be put on a desktop. This, in turn, paved the way for developing laptop and notebook versions of computers and indirectly influenced the development of mobile devices.
Microsoft Research Lab senior technical fellow David Cutler, who worked with Bell at Digital and Microsoft, said his main contribution was "his vision of the future," making computing "much more widespread and more personal."
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