Bob Evans, IBM mainframe pioneer, dies at 77

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

I had the privilege of working with Bo (B.O. Evans) while I was SHARE 
Secretary and then a member of the SHARE Executive Board. Once while 
sitting at a pool side table at one SHARE meeting Bo was telling me 
about the forthcoming IBM 360 (still quiet at that time) and asked me 
what he should do about the large amounts of programming languages IBM 
would have to implement for the 360. The result of that discussion was 
the PL/1 programming language intended to replace all the others with a 
superior language,

My excuse -- I was young.

Bo was a GREAT person -- to see how young and a picture of Bo see
http://homepage.mac.com/dfarber/PhotoAlbum1.html


Dave

Begin forwarded message:

From: Claudio Gutierrez <gutierrezclaudio () terra cl>
Date: September 6, 2004 9:15:18 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Bob Evans, IBM mainframe pioneer, dies at 77

News.com

Evans died of heart failure at his home in the San Francisco suburb of 
Hillsborough, his son Robert Evans said.

Evans began working at IBM in 1951 as a junior engineer after earning a 
bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University. 
When he retired from IBM 33 years later, he was vice president of 
engineering, programming and technology.

In the 1960s, Evans led a team that developed a new class of mainframe 
computers called the System/360, or S/360, which allowed different 
applications to be run simultaneously. IBM invested $5 billion in the 
project at a time when the company's annual revenue came to $3.2 
billion.

"Prior to the S/360, each computer was a unique system. They were made 
to an individual customer's order, and there was no continuity from 
design to design," Colette Martin, the director of zSeries products for 
IBM, told CNET News.com before the mainframe's 40th anniversary in 
April. "Prior to the S/360, they were single-application systems."

The architecture introduced in the S/360 is still in use in IBM 
mainframes.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan recognized Evans' work on the project 
with the National Medal of Technology. In 1991, he was presented with a 
Computer Pioneer Award from the Computing Society of the Institute of 
Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

From 1981 to 1995, Evans acted as a chief science adviser to the 
government of Taiwan, and later helped to start Taiwan's Vanguard 
International Semiconductor Corp.


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