Obituary of Norman H. Taylor

A pioneer in the computer industry, Norman H. Taylor, died on Friday, March 27, 2009 at the age of 92. MIT’s Whirlwind computer was the first fully parallel, electronic digital computer. It was also the first to incorporate magnetic core memories, in 1953. Taylor led the systems engineering group under the leadership of Prof. Jay Forrester, now a legend in the computer industry. Whirlwind was originally designed for flight simulation, but was primarily used for radar-driven air defense applications. Follow-on computers based on Whirlwind formed the basis of the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) System, an early air defense system for North America. Portions of Whirlwind have been exhibited in the Smithsonian Museum since 1975. Born near Manchester, England, in 1916, Taylor emigrated with his family to the United States at age six. He graduated from Bates College with a B.S. in Mathematics in 1937 and from MIT with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1939. Because of his knowledge of high-frequency electronics and radar, he spent the World War II years at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey designing radar-driven bomb sights. He returned to MIT to join the Whirlwind project in 1947. After Whirlwind, Taylor joined MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories where he led the group that developed the TX-0 and TX-2 computers, the first computer systems built from transistors rather than vacuum tubes. Ken Olson, who later founded Digital Equipment Corporation, worked in this group, and TX-2 was the computer used by Ivan Sutherland in his famous MIT Ph.D. dissertation pioneering the field of computer graphics. In 1957, Taylor was invited to join the Gaither Panel, a study group commissioned by President Eisenhower to study the threat raised by the USSR’s ICBM capability and recommend potential courses of action. The Gaither Panel Report, according to historians, had a fundamental impact on the air defense and strategic readiness strategies of the 1960’s. Taylor later worked on a number of other classified projects in the air defense arena. He then returned to the commercial computer industry leading development of early computer graphics systems at Itek Corporation and Control Data Corporation. He later became an industry consultant at Arthur D. Little and his own firm. Making vacuum tube computers reliable was a continuing problem in the early days. Taylor made fundamental contributions in the area of marginal testing, some of which are still used today, even with large-scale microprocessors. Whirlwind and, later, SAGE had remarkable reliability, far beyond what was thought possible. For these contributions, Taylor was elected a Fellow the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in 1970. He loved sailing, skiing and playing the piano. He was accomplished enough as a pianist to be invited to sit-in at breaks during his frequent visits to New York City. He leaves his wife, Lucille, of Peabody, Massachusetts, a son, Robert, of Plymouth and a daughter, Meredith Hession, of Ipswich as well as four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren A Memorial Service will be held at a later date.