Samuel Hawks Caldwell (January 15, 1904 – October 12, 1960) was an American electrical engineer, known for his contributions to the early computers.[1]

Early life and education

Caldwell enrolled at MIT in 1921, where he completed his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering.[2] His M.Sc. thesis was entitled Electrical characteristics and theory of operation of a dry electrolytic rectifier (1926). In his doctoral studies he worked on analog computers with Vannevar Bush, developing the Differential Analyzer. His Sc.D., advised by Bush, was entitled The Extension and Application of Differential Analyzer Technique in the Solution of Ordinary Differential Equations (1933).[3]

In 1934, he joined the faculty of the electrical engineering department as an assistant professor.[2]

World War II and Later Work

During World War II, Caldwell was a chief within the fire control section of the National Defense Research Committee.[4] For his work during WWII, he earned a Medal for Merit, the Naval Ordnance Development Award, and the King's Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom from Great Britain.[2] At the time, the Medal for Merit was the highest civilian honor granted by the United States.

After the war, he led the MIT Center of Analysis, where he reluctantly gave way to digital computing by initiating the Rockefeller Electronic Computer (RED) and supporting the Project Whirlwind.[5] The centre closed around 1950, after which Caldwell continued as a faculty member, being the advisor to both David A. Huffman (1953) and Edward J. McCluskey (1956).

In 1959, Caldwell published a paper describing his work on the "Sinotype," which was one of the first efforts at typesetting and compositing the Chinese language with a computer.[6] This program, which converted keystrokes into characters, has been described as the first instance of autocomplete.[7]

Publications

  • William H. Timbie and Henry Harold Higbie and Caldwell, Essentials of alternating currents, Wiley, 1939
  • Electrical Engineering Research at M.I.T. : an appreciation MIT, 1948
  • Analog and special purpose computing machines 1949
  • Caldwell, Samuel Hawks (1958-12-01) [February 1958]. Written at Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. Switching Circuits and Logical Design (1st ed.). New York, USA: John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN 0-47112969-0. LCCN 58-7896. (xviii+686 pages)

References

  1. ↑ biography from smartcomputing.com
  2. 1 2 3 Stratton, J. A. "MIT Official Announcement of Death" (PDF). MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections. Retrieved 11 April 2023.
  3. ↑ Samuel Hawks Caldwell at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ↑ "Collection: United States, National Defense Research Committee, Division 7, Section 7.2 records | MIT ArchivesSpace". archivesspace.mit.edu. Retrieved 11 April 2023.
  5. ↑ William Aspray, Was early entry a competitive advantage? in IEEE Annals of the history of computing, 2000
  6. ↑ Caldwell, Samuel H. (1 June 1959). "The sinotype—a machine for the composition of Chinese from a keyboard". Journal of the Franklin Institute. 267 (6): 471–502. doi:10.1016/0016-0032(59)90069-9.
  7. ↑ "Samuel H, Caldwell Develops the Sinotype, a System for Phototypesetting & Computer Processing the Chinese Language : History of Information". www.historyofinformation.com.
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