James H. Pomerene Explained

James Herbert Pomerene
Birth Date:	22 June 1920
Birth Place:	Yonkers, New York
Death Place:	Chappaqua, New York
Known For:	Computer design
Awards:	Computer Pioneer Award (1986)
Employer:	Institute for Advanced Study, IBM
Occupation:	Electrical engineer

James Herbert Pomerene (June 22, 1920  - December 7, 2008) was an electrical engineer and computer pioneer.

Biography

Pomerene was born June 22, 1920, in Yonkers, New York. His father was Joel Pomerene and mother was Elsie Bower.

He received the BS degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University in 1942. In 1945 he married Edythe Schwenn and had three children.

In 1946, he joined the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, under the leadership of John von Neumann. The project built a parallel stored program computer called the IAS machine that was the prototype for a number of machines such as the MANIAC I, ORACLE, and ILLIAC series. Pomerene designed and implemented the adder portion of the arithmetic unit.^[1]

Collaborating with engineers such as Bruce Gilchrist and Y.K. Wong, they invented a fast adder which incorporated a speed up technique for asynchronous adders reducing the time for additive carry-overs to propagate. This design was actually later incorporated in one commercial computer, the Philco TRANSAC S-2000, introduced in 1957, the first commercial transistorized computer.^[1]

Pomerene became chief engineer on the IAS computer project from 1951 to 1956.^[1]

In Summer 1956, Pomerene joined the IBM Corporation in Poughkeepsie, where he and several others started the development of various electronic computer systems such as the IBM 7030 and Harvest computers.^[2] He was appointed an IBM Fellow in 1976. He held 37 patents when he retired from IBM in 1993.

Pomerene was a Life Fellow of the IEEE^[3] and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He received the IEEE Edison Medal in 1993, and the Eckert-Mauchly Award in 2006.^[4]

He died December 7, 2008, in Chappaqua, New York.^[5]

Selected papers

• Gilchrist, B.; Pomerene, J.; Wong, S.Y., "Fast carry logic for digital computers" IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers, EC-4 (Dec.1955), pp. 133–136.
• Esterin, B.; Gilchrist, B.; Pomerene, J. H., "A Note on High Speed Digital Multiplication" IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers, vol. EC-5, p. 140 (1956).

Further reading

• Gilchrist, Bruce, "In Memoriam, James Pomerene (1920 - 2008)", New Castle Now, February 6, 2009.

Notes and References

1. Gilchrist, Bruce, "Remembering Some Early Computers, 1948-1960", Columbia University EPIC, 2006, pp.7-9.
2. Web site: Timeline of the Stretch/Harvest Era . Computer History Museum (1956-1961) . May 31, 2010 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160429212717/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/Stretch/102636400.txt . April 29, 2016 . dead .
3. Web site: Fellows - P . https://web.archive.org/web/20080718231546/http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/fellows/Alphabetical/pfellows.html#Po . dead . July 18, 2008 . IEEE Fellows . IEEE . 2010-01-23 . James H. Pomerene (Life Fellow) 1971: for contributions to the design and development of computing systems.
4. Web site: Norman Jouppi. Norm Jouppi . SIGARCH Annual Report . June 2006 . May 31, 2010 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110713013034/http://www.sigarch.org/05annrpt.html . July 13, 2011 .
5. News: . Pomerene, James Herbert . December 9, 2008 . James Her bert, 88, of Chappaqua, a Computer Pioneer died on December 7, 2008. He was born in Yonkers, New York on June 22, 1920 to Joel Pomerene and Elsie Bower. ... . May 31, 2010 .