Mainframe History – Bob Bemer

When it comes to mainframe history, Bob Bemer stands out as one of its more colorful characters. He was known for his personalized (self-aggrandizing) license plates, was married six times, and lived in a spectacular cliff-top house overlooking a reservoir. He became a programmer in 1949 and his career took him to positions at RAND Corporation, Marquardt, Lockheed, IBM, Univac, Bull GE, General Electric, and Honeywell, making a mark on each of these organizations. He was also the first to sound the alarm about the Y2K problem.

According to his obituary in The Independent, “He did not make any lasting scientific contributions, nor was he a captain of industry. Instead, he was a computer pundit with a flair for communication and a talent for spotting technical trends and issues that put him at the center of several developments that shaped the world of computing.”

Take our quiz and learn something about this mainframe pioneer!

1. What was Bob Bemer’s significant contribution to computer technology?

 Development of the Windows operating system

 Development of the Internet

 Creation of ASCII and the escape sequence solution

 Invention of the first computer mouse

2. What does ASCII stand for?

 American Standard Code for Information Interchange

 Advanced Standard Code for Information Integration

 American System for Computer Information

 Automated Standard Code for Internet

3. How many characters did Bemer contribute to the development of ASCII?

 Five

 Eight

 Ten

 Twelve

4. Which of the following terms were coined by Bemer?

 COBOL

 CODASYL

 Software Factory

 All of the above

5. Which IBM encoding system was made nonstandard by the acceptance of Bob Bemer’s solution?

 ASCII

 Unicode

 EBCDIC

 ANSI

6. Which of the following did Bemer develop while at IBM?

 PRINT I (the first load-and-go computer method)

 FORTRANSIT (the first major proof of intercomputer portability, and the second FORTRAN compiler)

 Commercial Translator (a COBOL input)

 All of the above

7. During his time at Lockheed Martin, Bemer devised the first computerized 3-D dynamic perspective, prelude to today’s computer animation.

 True

 False

8. In what year did Bemer first begin to publish warnings about the Y2K problem?

 1971

 1979

 1982

 1989

9. What personalized car license plates has Bob Bemer used that reflect his contributions?

 “INTERNET,” “HTML5,” “JAVA1,” “PYTHON2”

 “ASCII,” “ESC SEQ,” “Cobol 1,” “Cobol 2”

 “CODE1,” “CODE2,” “BYTE1,” “BYTE2”

 “SOFTWARE,” “HARDWARE,” “PROGRAM1,” “PROGRAM2”

10. How long have ASCII and its companion parallel codes survived?

 10 years

 20 years

 30 years

 50 years

 Loading …