Floyd Steele
American physicist, engineer and computer designer
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Early life
Floyd George Steele grew up in Colorado. He was named after his uncle, Floyd Odlum, a businessman known for coming out on top of the Great Depression.
Steele received his BA in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, a BS in electrical engineering and a MS in aeronautical engineering from Caltech. Before joining Northrop he worked for Douglas Aircraft from 1941 to 1944 and while in the Navy attended Captain Eddie's Radar School.[1]
MADDIDA
Steele was the conceptual leader of the MADDIDA design group at Northrop Corporation.[2]
Development of the MADDIDA began in 1946 with the goal of producing the first DIgital Data Analyzer (DIDA).[3] When the decision was made to use MAgnetic Drum memory (MAD) for the DIDA, the name was lengthened to MADDIDA (pronounced "Mad Ida").[3]
Steele drew influence from the analog computer invented in 1927 by Vannevar Bush, which had digital components.[2] Another influence to the MADDIDA's design was Lord Kelvin's Tide Predicting Machine, an analog computer completed in 1873.[2] Steele hired Donald Eckdahl, Hrant (Harold) Sarkinssian, and Richard Sprague to work on the MADIDDA's germanium diode logic circuits and also to do magnetic recording.[2]
In contrast to the ENIAC and UNIVAC I, which used electrical pulses to represent bits, the MADDIDA was the first computer to represent bits using voltage levels.[2] It was also the first computer whose entire logic was specified in Boolean algebra.[2] These features were an advancement from earlier digital computers which still had analog circuitry components.[4]
Soon after the MADIDDA's completion, Steele and his team realized that a general-purpose digital computer could also be used to as a differential analyzer through the use of an appropriate simulation language.[2]
The Computer Research Corporation
A year after the first MADIDDA was demonstrated, Steele and the MADDIDA design team left Northrop, and was joined by Irving S. Reed[2] On July 16, 1950 they formed the Computer Research Corporation (CRC) in order to develop general-purpose computers.[2]
After developing the Cadac, an early minicomputer, CRC was sold to National Cash Register (NCR) in February 1953.[2]