Among his more significant acomplishments were: long term marriage to Sylvia who preceded him in death; father to Judy and Jerry.
By e-mail, Judy wrote to me: I flew up to see Daddy yesterday and got home a little while ago. He passed away at about 4:30 this morning, and it seemed to have been peaceful enough.
Even though he was doped up with morphine he seemed to have some awareness of what was going on around him and occasionally responded with a nod of his head or a hand signal. So I told him about our communications, and about your high regard and fondness for him. His whole face relaxed and he had a little smile on his lips. I think that tells you about his regard for you.
Who was this man and what were some of his accomplishments?
I knew of him then only as the co-author of the first article published in the Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (S. I. A. M.), back in the late 50s, when I served for a time as its Book Reviews Editor.[R. F. Clippinger and B. Dimsdale and J. H. Levin, "Automatic Digital Computers in Industrial Research.{I}", Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, vol 1, 1, pps 1--15, Sept. 1953 ] When we had gotten acquainted, he spoke of the times at college when he played "mean" piano to earn some money; of the times on the ENIAC at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where there were some pressures later to leave (arising from Sen. McCarthy's hearings); of his work at Raytheon before joining I. B. M. In his career at I. B. M., he rose to Fellow - the highest title for a scientist at that time - stationed at the Los Angeles Scientific Center. But for a few years at the Washington DC IBM Space Center on Pennsylvania Avenue, Bernie managed the team responsible for the entire operating system underlying TAGIS - the Targeting, Acquisition and Ground Information System. This was the master program that enabled the stations around the world to follow the space vehicle containing the astronauts. (I have written a bit about the project in Aftermath, and have included links to photographs there.)
Here was an American mathematician, working in the early years of the general purpose digital computer, with stories to tell. Sadly our correspondence began in his last weeks. I am taking the liberty of copying (as received) some of that correspondence for the benefit of the younger generations that might read this page. ********************
Letter from Bernie dated Jan 23, 1999 --
Subject: Eniac story Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 21:02:17 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin I am very interested in your query about Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I have some vivid memories of that, and while I have written nothing down as yet I intend doing so, and will send it along when ready. I wasn't involved there with Herman Goldstine, but directly with Von Neumann. Also it was Dick Clippinger not Ray . And the subject was the Eniac, not the 709, which was years later. How I happened to get involved with Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Eniac follows. Several months before this happened I had gotten out of the Army, and took a jog teaching at Purdue. I discovered that I simply didn,t have patience for all the meatheads I was stuck with, so I quit and took sme post doctoral work at Colunbia. I also met Syl and married her – which suggested I needed a real job. Somebody mentioned a Dr. Dederick, who was hiring personnel for something called an Eniac Computer. I talked to the man,got interested and applied for the job, which, in 1947 paid the princely annual wage of $5000. Lo and behold I was informed that I was overqualified at that price and they offered me $6000, which I hastened to accept. This kind of thing never happened to me again, of course. I arrived at Aberdeen early in 1947, was greeted by Dr. Dederick, who handed me a stack of wiring diagrams, about 15 incmes thick as I recall, and said go compute. Believe me, I was terrified, particularly since the head of the physics department handed me a non linear partial differntial equatio n to deal with. They were gettig nowhere with the thing. My confidence was somewhat boosted by a problem the "programmers' came running to me with. It seems that they were running some sort of statistical calculation, it was suppose to converge to 1, and they said just shot by 1.. I asked where it got to and they hadn't bothered to find out, so I said lets find out. Sure enough it started to converge to 1.4142 etc. whereupon I called the statistician and asked him if he let the sqaure root of 2 out of his denominator. He came back and said he sure did, and how did I find out. I made some sort of reference to my genius for this sort of thing. I got rid of the partial differenc equation by making, by the grace of God a transformation that showed a solution existed only in the unit circle, which is where they didn't want one, so I suggested they might want to restate their problem. The problem with this gadget, the Eniac, was that it was an enormous plug borad machine with literally thousands of entry points. Once all the connections had been made, and hundreds of switches set, it was started by giving it a pulse of electricity somewhere. If a mistake was made at that point, it would start off doing God knows what, and it took a major effort to stop the thing so you could try again – something on the order of 'whos' of first, of baseball fame. In retrospect it was almost a miracle getting anything out of that machine. Therre was no way to check your "program". It either worked or it didn't ,so go figure. Besides which there was no power control , so one would frequently blow vacuum tubes - in .large batches – remember there were twenty thousand vacuum tubes in the machine. It also turned out to be a very nervous machine – that is you neeeded to be very careful around it – certainly don't lean on anything. At turned out that it got less nervous over the years as whole rows of unsoldered connections were found And because of no power control it was only possible to get anywhere with the machine from about midnight to first electric lights etc. in the neighborhood. We all got in a hell of a lot of bridge, listening to the card punch, which was the only output from the thing and somehow told us when things were going wrong. That is when we started up with Von Neumann and spent a very interesting year or two making the machine programmable in the sense of von Neumann. More later. ********************
I am very interested in your query about Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I have some vivid memories of that, and while I have written nothing down as yet I intend doing so, and will send it along when ready. I wasn't involved there with Herman Goldstine, but directly with Von Neumann. Also it was Dick Clippinger not Ray . And the subject was the Eniac, not the 709, which was years later.
How I happened to get involved with Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Eniac follows. Several months before this happened I had gotten out of the Army, and took a jog teaching at Purdue. I discovered that I simply didn,t have patience for all the meatheads I was stuck with, so I quit and took sme post doctoral work at Colunbia. I also met Syl and married her – which suggested I needed a real job. Somebody mentioned a Dr. Dederick, who was hiring personnel for something called an Eniac Computer. I talked to the man,got interested and applied for the job, which, in 1947 paid the princely annual wage of $5000. Lo and behold I was informed that I was overqualified at that price and they offered me $6000, which I hastened to accept. This kind of thing never happened to me again, of course.
I arrived at Aberdeen early in 1947, was greeted by Dr. Dederick, who handed me a stack of wiring diagrams, about 15 incmes thick as I recall, and said go compute. Believe me, I was terrified, particularly since the head of the physics department handed me a non linear partial differntial equatio n to deal with. They were gettig nowhere with the thing. My confidence was somewhat boosted by a problem the "programmers' came running to me with. It seems that they were running some sort of statistical calculation, it was suppose to converge to 1, and they said just shot by 1.. I asked where it got to and they hadn't bothered to find out, so I said lets find out. Sure enough it started to converge to 1.4142 etc. whereupon I called the statistician and asked him if he let the sqaure root of 2 out of his denominator. He came back and said he sure did, and how did I find out. I made some sort of reference to my genius for this sort of thing. I got rid of the partial differenc equation by making, by the grace of God a transformation that showed a solution existed only in the unit circle, which is where they didn't want one, so I suggested they might want to restate their problem. The problem with this gadget, the Eniac, was that it was an enormous plug borad machine with literally thousands of entry points. Once all the connections had been made, and hundreds of switches set, it was started by giving it a pulse of electricity somewhere. If a mistake was made at that point, it would start off doing God knows what, and it took a major effort to stop the thing so you could try again – something on the order of 'whos' of first, of baseball fame. In retrospect it was almost a miracle getting anything out of that machine. Therre was no way to check your "program". It either worked or it didn't ,so go figure. Besides which there was no power control , so one would frequently blow vacuum tubes - in .large batches – remember there were twenty thousand vacuum tubes in the machine. It also turned out to be a very nervous machine – that is you neeeded to be very careful around it – certainly don't lean on anything. At turned out that it got less nervous over the years as whole rows of unsoldered connections were found And because of no power control it was only possible to get anywhere with the machine from about midnight to first electric lights etc. in the neighborhood. We all got in a hell of a lot of bridge, listening to the card punch, which was the only output from the thing and somehow told us when things were going wrong.
That is when we started up with Von Neumann and spent a very interesting year or two making the machine programmable in the sense of von Neumann. More later.
Subject: Short message Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 15:32:48 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin Sorry, I hope I didn't tie up your printer too long. If it happens again, I will ask you if you just received a long document, and wait for your response. I suddenly remembered a picture I have of myself, in front of the Eniac console., expounding to Secretary of the Army (when there was one) Frank Pace, accompanied by the commanding general of APG, the technical nature of the Eniac. This would have been about 1947 1948. I gave the picture to Jerry as a memento. If he can find it I'll have it copied and sent to you. It does seem to me that this was years before I heard of any of the rest of you . Of course I missed the opportunity of a lifetime to document in detail what was going on..But there it is, so ---. When I have described what happened with Von Neumann, and a few other things, like perhaps Joe McCarthy, I will send it along. Hope Jerry hasn't lost my picture. ********************
Sorry, I hope I didn't tie up your printer too long. If it happens again, I will ask you if you just received a long document, and wait for your response.
I suddenly remembered a picture I have of myself, in front of the Eniac console., expounding to Secretary of the Army (when there was one) Frank Pace, accompanied by the commanding general of APG, the technical nature of the Eniac. This would have been about 1947 1948. I gave the picture to Jerry as a memento. If he can find it I'll have it copied and sent to you. It does seem to me that this was years before I heard of any of the rest of you .
Of course I missed the opportunity of a lifetime to document in detail what was going on..But there it is, so ---. When I have described what happened with Von Neumann, and a few other things, like perhaps Joe McCarthy, I will send it along. Hope Jerry hasn't lost my picture.
And to his daughter, Judy, an excerpt -
Subject: Response to January 23 Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 20:07:01 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Judith Finally I must get down to the way things are with me. The fact of the matter is that this last session in the hospital cost me another 4 pounds of weight. I am now down to about 146. It took away a little more of my breathing capacity. Next time I will need a n oxygen tank if I need anything. My kidney is apparently failing, which is why the water problem, and a shadow has turned up on my lung, which is to be x-rayed every two months. It could be lung cancer, particularly since my brother died of lung cancer, but it doesn't have to be. In any event Dr, Braker and I agreed this afternoon that if it was I will not be going for violent drug treatment, Nor, according to Braker, am I a viable candidate for lung surgery. It is agreed among all of us, that the only thing to do in this event is to treat me for pain. I really think I don't have much time. That is why I think there may be considerable relief for you, financially , before long, and you should be able to do some of the relaxing I mentioned above as possible. I know my departure will grieve you, but I prefer that you think instead of what it will do for you. Love Dad ********************
Finally I must get down to the way things are with me. The fact of the matter is that this last session in the hospital cost me another 4 pounds of weight. I am now down to about 146. It took away a little more of my breathing capacity. Next time I will need a n oxygen tank if I need anything. My kidney is apparently failing, which is why the water problem, and a shadow has turned up on my lung, which is to be x-rayed every two months. It could be lung cancer, particularly since my brother died of lung cancer, but it doesn't have to be. In any event Dr, Braker and I agreed this afternoon that if it was I will not be going for violent drug treatment, Nor, according to Braker, am I a viable candidate for lung surgery. It is agreed among all of us, that the only thing to do in this event is to treat me for pain. I really think I don't have much time. That is why I think there may be considerable relief for you, financially , before long, and you should be able to do some of the relaxing I mentioned above as possible. I know my departure will grieve you, but I prefer that you think instead of what it will do for you.
Love
Dad
In the midst of his pain, Bernie continued to write with this note:
Subject: continuation Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 15:42:12 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin To start over a bit, what we had with the Eniac was a huge pile of parts which could be assembled into essentially a special calculator for a problem at hand. Of course,in the circumstances described it was a horrendous job to do so, without any real guidelines provided. Thus it was normally a matter of months to set the thing up for a new problem, and generally a matter of minutes to run the problem, once enerything was checked out and ready to go. It occurs to me that the original motivation was to set it up for artillery firing tables, an d maybe that was well in hand. The AEC was bouncing around too, presumable with its setup known -–but I am guessing! The way we operted with John (von N hereafter in this document John) wsas as follows; he was consulting with APG I elieve four days a year – at a pice of $50 per day. We would meet with him regularly with our little problem, make a little progress hopefully and either go up to Princeton U, IAS for further discussions. This went on for about two years, during which we inched into the necessary modifications of the Eniac to make a general purpose computer out of it. We involved electronic engineers from Aberdeen in the problems of permanently assembling the machine, which took no little time. We then spent a major amount of time deciding on a language for the machine. Programming language to the machine was fed to it on the "function tables" a battery of three hundred by ten switches, each one originally designed to hold input data, but now used for instructons to the machine. But it occurs to me the machine I am trying to get to is the one that everybody knows about – so no more on that. It is interesting, at least to me, what happened when we arrived at ou r final result. I remember suggesting a three address code which I had written up. John looked at it, said it seems complete, and lets go with it (we had already tried a number of ideas that didn't work). One day Dick Clippinger same in and said he thought he had a code checker (how about elementary tracer?) It occurred to me that it was stupid to assign our memery (of which we had fifteen numbers) as the numbers whci actually specified them. So I gave them names which made some sense, and filled in the numbers when I had the program written (hand assembly?. All this seemed so natural to us that we saw no sense in making a big deal out of it. It is what mathematicians make a living doing – so what? But there were much greater things coming out of this, such as systematic ways to check for all kinds of errors. One final note of interest, maybe. The new machine was up and working beautifully – as compared with before. Dederick had left on some business or other and left me in charge of operations. John walked into my office and seemed very upset. He said "John Holburton intends to tear the new systemoff and go back to the original arrangement." John Holburton had been the principal "programmer?". I assured him that wasn't going to happen as long as I was in charge. I would talk about it with Dederick when he came back Sure enough, I was called to his officeas son as he returned. He said to me " John H. has been telling me that John v. was giving him a hard time and you were no help. John says the Eniac is six times faster without the code. I said that is all true, but not consequential. If it takes months to set up the machone, and five minutes to do the computation, Versus a few hours doing code and thirthy minutes of calculation, just how does that stack up. That was the end of John H.s case Subsequently we became good friends and he was even willing to testify at my security hearing, but my lawyer said he was too weak a reed to use. ******************** As a side issue - the name of Dimsdale ... Aside from its appearance in literature, there was a Dimsdale in American history in that part of the midwest when Bernie came. I questioned him on this - knowing that so many names are "created" at Ellis Island (as was mine and later my uncle's). I had written them:- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 22:49:11 -0500 From: PLC To: "Dimsdale, Bernard" BCC: "Pumphrey, Judy" Thanks for the continuation of the saga of that era, Bernie. I await your dropping the next shoe (I suppose you to be a centipede, so I expect many more shoes). I forget if I inquired of you about a possible ancestor in 19th century mid-west, Josiah. Here is the beginning of his story told by a scholar whose webpage I have lost. QUOTE Thomas Josiah Dimsdale It was not until the summer of 1864 that the first leading character in Montana journalism appeared on the stage in that role. On August 27th of that year, one John Buchanan published the first number of the first newspaper printed in the Territory. It was called the Montana Post. Mr. Buchanan's connection with the Post was very brief. It may be said to have ended with the first issue, for the second number bore the imprint of D. W. Tilton Co., publishers and proprietors, though the services of its founder were retained in the editorial department for a few weeks thereafter. The management of its columns was intrusted to Prof. Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, whom the reading people of the state doubtless know more familiarly as the author of "The Vigilantes of Montana." Professor Dimsdale was an English gentleman of fine scholarly attainments, having received his preliminary education in the preparatory school of Rugby, made famous by Hughes' well known novel, ''Tom Brown of Rugby.'' He was born near Thirlsby in north England, and came of a family noted as being among the leading iron-masters, engineers and contractors of public works in that part of the country. Thomas J. was not of robust physique and as he himself expressed it was the "runt of the family," so his parents designed him for the Church and he was sent to Oxford to complete his education for the ministry. But financial disaster came to the family because of the failure of a scheme to utilize the sewage of the city of London in the reclamation of barren lands and he was compelled to give up university work in his sophomore year. He then emigrated to Canada, locating at Millbrook, Ontario, where he experienced many vicissitudes of fortune. On the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains he joined the throng of adventurers travelling hitherward. UNQUOTE Of course, Dimsdale is a name featured in Vanity Fair? or some other novel I was forced to read in "English Literature". So digress, and tell me about the Dimsdale stock.. ******************** Judy wrote ... And, regarding the story about Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, Daddy may already have told you that ours is an "acquired" name, bestowed upon us by the kindly and generous people at Ellis Island when the family arrived from Russia. I never have learned how it happened that they all acquired the same last name. So, it is not likely that a bunch of Russian Jews are related to the Professor who was supposed to have been dedicated to the Church of England. I believe the literary class to which you referred was The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, if memory serves) with the villainous Reverend Arthur (?) Dimmesdale. ******************** To conclude this aside on the Dimsdale name, here is Bernie's own note: Subject: Dimsdales Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 23:16:56 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin I an across your western Dimsdale a long time ago. Let me take care of all the thousands of my Dimsdale relatives (for sale in a book I am occassionally offered - for sale. My father left left Russia in 1902with a name utterly different from Dimsdale. If was assigned to him on arrival here. So, aside from the announcement in Schillers program that "All men are brothers" not a singl Dimsdale from before 1902 is related to us. I hope that is not being too snooty! Bernie ******************** While I was recovering from a case of laryngitis, Bernie could demonstrate his wry wit: Subject: Re: Two sick old men Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 15:42:49 -0500 From: PLC To: Bernard Dimsdale BCC: "Pumphrey, Judy" References: 1 Bernard Dimsdale wrote: > I guess it is up to us to entertain each other. Well, I have a deep dark > secret that I am sure you will enjoy at this time. > But first, a bit of mathematics. You may remember the Lipschitz > functional condition having to do with a measure of continuity. Well , > for my Ph.D thesis I needed a geneealization of this condition. > Eventually my colleagoes started calling it the Dimschitz condition. > What is , I think, Excruciatingly funny about that is that is the name > my father brougt to America, and you can see why the change. It has > always been a little difficult for me to keep a straight fac when I hear > about the Dimschitz condition. > Now your secret??? > > Bernie ******************** Bernie had a problem during the McCarthy era, while working at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I asked him to write about it. Subject: McCarthy et el Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 15:01:36 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin You have asked me for the McCarthy story of my day. I was sitting peacefully in my office when someone came rushing in to tell me that there were a couple of FBI agents rousting Boris Garfinkls office and that they had found two books in Russian enough they thought to charge him as a communist. So they marched him off the post and for the moment that was that. Later we had meetings with Boris, who denied he was a communist but rather was a loyol son of a Ukrainian group Well, a number of us volunteered to testify fr Boris, and did so a.t his hearing Dick Clippinger and I did, with the consequence that we were knocked out also – jus another two communists. We resigned our jobs – one hel of a mistake. Anyhow we were removedand essentially the group broke up. One of my friends came charging into my office and wanted to kn ow what was going on. So finally I told him exactly what was going on, whereupon he immediately disappeared. I saw him about anhour latera asked about it. What he saidwas that he hed been on his way to rejedt a job in Minnepolis. Nstead he accepted the job- What he said was that if you are a communist so is everybody else around here and I getter get the hellout of here! Maybe that explains what happened to my crew. Any how the last thing I had to do with the Eniac happenened in 1952. Subsequently Dick and I were both looking for jobs. It took some doing, but we finally dicavered Raytheon. They were courageous enough to take us on. They rented a small pfice towork in, since we werent allowed in the main plant. In 1955 we finally had our hearings and recovered our status, only to find that long before Garfinkell had been cleared. By the way, some of our experience had been publishrd in six articles, I believe in the very first publications of SIAM, which I suppose can be found. So far as I know, there exists no other description of ENIACs first five years at Aberdeen And with this I must drop the subject. My health is gone (hospitals Doctors etc.) and I really am not interested in pursuing a subject I should have done a great deal more about when I had the chance. I hope your health is improving and you feel better. I am not incommunicadoi, just tired of this subject. ******************** While Bernie was preeoccupied in the Mercury Project with getting out a complete Operating Sysytem that would work in real time (a term meant to signify that the output of an operation would be available as input for the next when required - and "required" meant within a few cycles of the CPU), I was involved in programming some of those "user" programs. Thus our time together was either as teacher-student in development management (which I highly regarded as I looked back at my management assignments), or as cribbage players during lunch hours. I believe that at the time he packed up to return to Santa Monica, he owed me about $32,000.00, which was forgiven as we separated. Actually, we never really separated. Using the internal tie-lines, we continued our friendship with humor exchanges, math research discussions, and family chat. Whenever I came to Santa Monica, I was a welcomed guest. Sylvia and I chatted and smoked for hours on end while Bernie and the kids did "their thing". Bernie had many interests besides that of systems management (about which he published several papers), many of them were internal IBM documents, but a few saw daylight. One subject that drew his interest was that of the numerical control of machine tools such as those in milling metallic surfaces. In an abstract from a paper published in 1975, Multiconic surfaces are a generalization of the type of surface called polyconic in numerical control of machine tools. The general theory is developed in this paper using a new parametrization. In the original form there was a problem as to whether or not a point that satisfies surface equations actually belonged to the intended surface. This difficulty is removed by the new technique. Algorithms for calculation of line and plane intersections with the surface and for calculation of normal vectors, volume, and surface area are given for classes of defining functions of which it is required only that they have appropriate conditions of continuity and differentiability. My last visit with Bernie was in August 1998, with Iz Krongold, of the team, bringing each other up to date, and recalling fondly those days of the space project in Washington. In those days, we could step outside during the cherry blossom season and enjoy nice breaks from the programming pressure. But in 1998, Bernie was clearly declining as this photo of us shows. While I am not Bernie's biographer, I can point out several papers he authored (the last one I found was his paper with friend and colleague Al Inselberg, 1994 on "Multidimensional Lines"): B. Dimsdale and G. M. Weinberg, "Programmed Error Correction in Project Mercury", Communications of the ACM Volume 3, Number 12, December, 1960 pps 649--652 B. Dimsdale, "Computer Construction of Minimal Project Networks", IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL Volume 2, March, 1963, pps 24--36 B. Dimsdale and H. P. Flatt, "Project Evaluation and Selection", IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL Volume 2, September 1963, pps 200--217 B. Dimsdale and H. M. Markowitz, "A Description of the {SIMSCRIPT} Language", IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL Volume 3, number 1, 1964, pps 57--67 B. Dimsdale and K. Johnson, "Multiconic Surfaces", IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Volume 19, Number 6, November 1975, pps 523--529 B. Dimsdale and R. M. Burkley, "Bicubic Patch Surfaces for High-Speed Numerical Control Processing", IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, Volume 20, Number 4, July 1976, pps358--367 B. Dimsdale, "Convex Cubic Splines", IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, Volume 22, Number 2, March 1978, pps 168--178 This interest in hyperdimensional space, that arose, as I recall it, as he consulted for several automobile manufacturers, is summarized here. A larger listing of his publications in the area of computer sciences may be found via the search on his name, B. Dimsdale, here . (This page was completed Wednesday, February 23, 2000) This site is managed by Aruba Consulting, Inc., Los Gatos, California
To start over a bit, what we had with the Eniac was a huge pile of parts which could be assembled into essentially a special calculator for a problem at hand. Of course,in the circumstances described it was a horrendous job to do so, without any real guidelines provided. Thus it was normally a matter of months to set the thing up for a new problem, and generally a matter of minutes to run the problem, once enerything was checked out and ready to go. It occurs to me that the original motivation was to set it up for artillery firing tables, an d maybe that was well in hand. The AEC was bouncing around too, presumable with its setup known -–but I am guessing!
The way we operted with John (von N hereafter in this document John) wsas as follows; he was consulting with APG I elieve four days a year – at a pice of $50 per day. We would meet with him regularly with our little problem, make a little progress hopefully and either go up to Princeton U, IAS for further discussions. This went on for about two years, during which we inched into the necessary modifications of the Eniac to make a general purpose computer out of it. We involved electronic engineers from Aberdeen in the problems of permanently assembling the machine, which took no little time. We then spent a major amount of time deciding on a language for the machine. Programming language to the machine was fed to it on the "function tables" a battery of three hundred by ten switches, each one originally designed to hold input data, but now used for instructons to the machine. But it occurs to me the machine I am trying to get to is the one that everybody knows about – so no more on that. It is interesting, at least to me, what happened when we arrived at ou r final result. I remember suggesting a three address code which I had written up. John looked at it, said it seems complete, and lets go with it (we had already tried a number of ideas that didn't work). One day Dick Clippinger same in and said he thought he had a code checker (how about elementary tracer?) It occurred to me that it was stupid to assign our memery (of which we had fifteen numbers) as the numbers whci actually specified them. So I gave them names which made some sense, and filled in the numbers when I had the program written (hand assembly?. All this seemed so natural to us that we saw no sense in making a big deal out of it. It is what mathematicians make a living doing – so what?
But there were much greater things coming out of this, such as systematic ways to check for all kinds of errors.
One final note of interest, maybe. The new machine was up and working beautifully – as compared with before. Dederick had left on some business or other and left me in charge of operations. John walked into my office and seemed very upset. He said "John Holburton intends to tear the new systemoff and go back to the original arrangement." John Holburton had been the principal "programmer?". I assured him that wasn't going to happen as long as I was in charge. I would talk about it with Dederick when he came back Sure enough, I was called to his officeas son as he returned. He said to me " John H. has been telling me that John v. was giving him a hard time and you were no help. John says the Eniac is six times faster without the code. I said that is all true, but not consequential. If it takes months to set up the machone, and five minutes to do the computation, Versus a few hours doing code and thirthy minutes of calculation, just how does that stack up. That was the end of John H.s case Subsequently we became good friends and he was even willing to testify at my security hearing, but my lawyer said he was too weak a reed to use. ********************
As a side issue - the name of Dimsdale ... Aside from its appearance in literature, there was a Dimsdale in American history in that part of the midwest when Bernie came. I questioned him on this - knowing that so many names are "created" at Ellis Island (as was mine and later my uncle's).
I had written them:-
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 22:49:11 -0500 From: PLC To: "Dimsdale, Bernard" BCC: "Pumphrey, Judy" Thanks for the continuation of the saga of that era, Bernie. I await your dropping the next shoe (I suppose you to be a centipede, so I expect many more shoes). I forget if I inquired of you about a possible ancestor in 19th century mid-west, Josiah. Here is the beginning of his story told by a scholar whose webpage I have lost. QUOTE Thomas Josiah Dimsdale It was not until the summer of 1864 that the first leading character in Montana journalism appeared on the stage in that role. On August 27th of that year, one John Buchanan published the first number of the first newspaper printed in the Territory. It was called the Montana Post. Mr. Buchanan's connection with the Post was very brief. It may be said to have ended with the first issue, for the second number bore the imprint of D. W. Tilton Co., publishers and proprietors, though the services of its founder were retained in the editorial department for a few weeks thereafter. The management of its columns was intrusted to Prof. Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, whom the reading people of the state doubtless know more familiarly as the author of "The Vigilantes of Montana." Professor Dimsdale was an English gentleman of fine scholarly attainments, having received his preliminary education in the preparatory school of Rugby, made famous by Hughes' well known novel, ''Tom Brown of Rugby.'' He was born near Thirlsby in north England, and came of a family noted as being among the leading iron-masters, engineers and contractors of public works in that part of the country. Thomas J. was not of robust physique and as he himself expressed it was the "runt of the family," so his parents designed him for the Church and he was sent to Oxford to complete his education for the ministry. But financial disaster came to the family because of the failure of a scheme to utilize the sewage of the city of London in the reclamation of barren lands and he was compelled to give up university work in his sophomore year. He then emigrated to Canada, locating at Millbrook, Ontario, where he experienced many vicissitudes of fortune. On the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains he joined the throng of adventurers travelling hitherward. UNQUOTE Of course, Dimsdale is a name featured in Vanity Fair? or some other novel I was forced to read in "English Literature". So digress, and tell me about the Dimsdale stock.. ********************
Thanks for the continuation of the saga of that era, Bernie. I await your dropping the next shoe (I suppose you to be a centipede, so I expect many more shoes). I forget if I inquired of you about a possible ancestor in 19th century mid-west, Josiah. Here is the beginning of his story told by a scholar whose webpage I have lost.
QUOTE Thomas Josiah Dimsdale It was not until the summer of 1864 that the first leading character in Montana journalism appeared on the stage in that role. On August 27th of that year, one John Buchanan published the first number of the first newspaper printed in the Territory. It was called the Montana Post. Mr. Buchanan's connection with the Post was very brief. It may be said to have ended with the first issue, for the second number bore the imprint of D. W. Tilton Co., publishers and proprietors, though the services of its founder were retained in the editorial department for a few weeks thereafter. The management of its columns was intrusted to Prof. Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, whom the reading people of the state doubtless know more familiarly as the author of "The Vigilantes of Montana."
Professor Dimsdale was an English gentleman of fine scholarly attainments, having received his preliminary education in the preparatory school of Rugby, made famous by Hughes' well known novel, ''Tom Brown of Rugby.'' He was born near Thirlsby in north England, and came of a family noted as being among the leading iron-masters, engineers and contractors of public works in that part of the country. Thomas J. was not of robust physique and as he himself expressed it was the "runt of the family," so his parents designed him for the Church and he was sent to Oxford to complete his education for the ministry. But financial disaster came to the family because of the failure of a scheme to utilize the sewage of the city of London in the reclamation of barren lands and he was compelled to give up university work in his sophomore year. He then emigrated to Canada, locating at Millbrook, Ontario, where he experienced many vicissitudes of fortune. On the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains he joined the throng of adventurers travelling hitherward. UNQUOTE
Of course, Dimsdale is a name featured in Vanity Fair? or some other novel I was forced to read in "English Literature". So digress, and tell me about the Dimsdale stock..
Judy wrote ...
And, regarding the story about Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, Daddy may already have told you that ours is an "acquired" name, bestowed upon us by the kindly and generous people at Ellis Island when the family arrived from Russia. I never have learned how it happened that they all acquired the same last name. So, it is not likely that a bunch of Russian Jews are related to the Professor who was supposed to have been dedicated to the Church of England. I believe the literary class to which you referred was The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, if memory serves) with the villainous Reverend Arthur (?) Dimmesdale. ********************
To conclude this aside on the Dimsdale name, here is Bernie's own note:
Subject: Dimsdales Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 23:16:56 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin I an across your western Dimsdale a long time ago. Let me take care of all the thousands of my Dimsdale relatives (for sale in a book I am occassionally offered - for sale. My father left left Russia in 1902with a name utterly different from Dimsdale. If was assigned to him on arrival here. So, aside from the announcement in Schillers program that "All men are brothers" not a singl Dimsdale from before 1902 is related to us. I hope that is not being too snooty! Bernie ********************
I an across your western Dimsdale a long time ago. Let me take care of all the thousands of my Dimsdale relatives (for sale in a book I am occassionally offered - for sale. My father left left Russia in 1902with a name utterly different from Dimsdale. If was assigned to him on arrival here. So, aside from the announcement in Schillers program that "All men are brothers" not a singl Dimsdale from before 1902 is related to us. I hope that is not being too snooty!
Bernie
While I was recovering from a case of laryngitis, Bernie could demonstrate his wry wit:
Subject: Re: Two sick old men Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 15:42:49 -0500 From: PLC To: Bernard Dimsdale BCC: "Pumphrey, Judy" References: 1 Bernard Dimsdale wrote: > I guess it is up to us to entertain each other. Well, I have a deep dark > secret that I am sure you will enjoy at this time. > But first, a bit of mathematics. You may remember the Lipschitz > functional condition having to do with a measure of continuity. Well , > for my Ph.D thesis I needed a geneealization of this condition. > Eventually my colleagoes started calling it the Dimschitz condition. > What is , I think, Excruciatingly funny about that is that is the name > my father brougt to America, and you can see why the change. It has > always been a little difficult for me to keep a straight fac when I hear > about the Dimschitz condition. > Now your secret??? > > Bernie ********************
Bernard Dimsdale wrote: > I guess it is up to us to entertain each other. Well, I have a deep dark > secret that I am sure you will enjoy at this time. > But first, a bit of mathematics. You may remember the Lipschitz > functional condition having to do with a measure of continuity. Well , > for my Ph.D thesis I needed a geneealization of this condition. > Eventually my colleagoes started calling it the Dimschitz condition. > What is , I think, Excruciatingly funny about that is that is the name > my father brougt to America, and you can see why the change. It has > always been a little difficult for me to keep a straight fac when I hear > about the Dimschitz condition. > Now your secret??? > > Bernie
Bernie had a problem during the McCarthy era, while working at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I asked him to write about it.
Subject: McCarthy et el Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 15:01:36 -0800 From: Bernard Dimsdale To: Paul Chessin You have asked me for the McCarthy story of my day. I was sitting peacefully in my office when someone came rushing in to tell me that there were a couple of FBI agents rousting Boris Garfinkls office and that they had found two books in Russian enough they thought to charge him as a communist. So they marched him off the post and for the moment that was that. Later we had meetings with Boris, who denied he was a communist but rather was a loyol son of a Ukrainian group Well, a number of us volunteered to testify fr Boris, and did so a.t his hearing Dick Clippinger and I did, with the consequence that we were knocked out also – jus another two communists. We resigned our jobs – one hel of a mistake. Anyhow we were removedand essentially the group broke up. One of my friends came charging into my office and wanted to kn ow what was going on. So finally I told him exactly what was going on, whereupon he immediately disappeared. I saw him about anhour latera asked about it. What he saidwas that he hed been on his way to rejedt a job in Minnepolis. Nstead he accepted the job- What he said was that if you are a communist so is everybody else around here and I getter get the hellout of here! Maybe that explains what happened to my crew. Any how the last thing I had to do with the Eniac happenened in 1952. Subsequently Dick and I were both looking for jobs. It took some doing, but we finally dicavered Raytheon. They were courageous enough to take us on. They rented a small pfice towork in, since we werent allowed in the main plant. In 1955 we finally had our hearings and recovered our status, only to find that long before Garfinkell had been cleared. By the way, some of our experience had been publishrd in six articles, I believe in the very first publications of SIAM, which I suppose can be found. So far as I know, there exists no other description of ENIACs first five years at Aberdeen And with this I must drop the subject. My health is gone (hospitals Doctors etc.) and I really am not interested in pursuing a subject I should have done a great deal more about when I had the chance. I hope your health is improving and you feel better. I am not incommunicadoi, just tired of this subject.
You have asked me for the McCarthy story of my day.
I was sitting peacefully in my office when someone came rushing in to tell me that there were a couple of FBI agents rousting Boris Garfinkls office and that they had found two books in Russian enough they thought to charge him as a communist. So they marched him off the post and for the moment that was that. Later we had meetings with Boris, who denied he was a communist but rather was a loyol son of a Ukrainian group Well, a number of us volunteered to testify fr Boris, and did so a.t his hearing Dick Clippinger and I did, with the consequence that we were knocked out also – jus another two communists. We resigned our jobs – one hel of a mistake. Anyhow we were removedand essentially the group broke up. One of my friends came charging into my office and wanted to kn ow what was going on. So finally I told him exactly what was going on, whereupon he immediately disappeared.
I saw him about anhour latera asked about it. What he saidwas that he hed been on his way to rejedt a job in Minnepolis. Nstead he accepted the job- What he said was that if you are a communist so is everybody else around here and I getter get the hellout of here! Maybe that explains what happened to my crew. Any how the last thing I had to do with the Eniac happenened in 1952.
Subsequently Dick and I were both looking for jobs. It took some doing, but we finally dicavered Raytheon. They were courageous enough to take us on. They rented a small pfice towork in, since we werent allowed in the main plant. In 1955 we finally had our hearings and recovered our status, only to find that long before Garfinkell had been cleared. By the way, some of our experience had been publishrd in six articles, I believe in the very first publications of SIAM, which I suppose can be found. So far as I know, there exists no other description of ENIACs first five years at Aberdeen
And with this I must drop the subject. My health is gone (hospitals Doctors etc.) and I really am not interested in pursuing a subject I should have done a great deal more about when I had the chance. I hope your health is improving and you feel better. I am not incommunicadoi, just tired of this subject.
********************
While Bernie was preeoccupied in the Mercury Project with getting out a complete Operating Sysytem that would work in real time (a term meant to signify that the output of an operation would be available as input for the next when required - and "required" meant within a few cycles of the CPU), I was involved in programming some of those "user" programs. Thus our time together was either as teacher-student in development management (which I highly regarded as I looked back at my management assignments), or as cribbage players during lunch hours. I believe that at the time he packed up to return to Santa Monica, he owed me about $32,000.00, which was forgiven as we separated.
Actually, we never really separated. Using the internal tie-lines, we continued our friendship with humor exchanges, math research discussions, and family chat. Whenever I came to Santa Monica, I was a welcomed guest. Sylvia and I chatted and smoked for hours on end while Bernie and the kids did "their thing".
Bernie had many interests besides that of systems management (about which he published several papers), many of them were internal IBM documents, but a few saw daylight. One subject that drew his interest was that of the numerical control of machine tools such as those in milling metallic surfaces. In an abstract from a paper published in 1975, Multiconic surfaces are a generalization of the type of surface called polyconic in numerical control of machine tools. The general theory is developed in this paper using a new parametrization. In the original form there was a problem as to whether or not a point that satisfies surface equations actually belonged to the intended surface. This difficulty is removed by the new technique. Algorithms for calculation of line and plane intersections with the surface and for calculation of normal vectors, volume, and surface area are given for classes of defining functions of which it is required only that they have appropriate conditions of continuity and differentiability.
My last visit with Bernie was in August 1998, with Iz Krongold, of the team, bringing each other up to date, and recalling fondly those days of the space project in Washington. In those days, we could step outside during the cherry blossom season and enjoy nice breaks from the programming pressure. But in 1998, Bernie was clearly declining as this photo of us shows.
While I am not Bernie's biographer, I can point out several papers he authored (the last one I found was his paper with friend and colleague Al Inselberg, 1994 on "Multidimensional Lines"):
B. Dimsdale and G. M. Weinberg, "Programmed Error Correction in Project Mercury", Communications of the ACM Volume 3, Number 12, December, 1960 pps 649--652
B. Dimsdale, "Computer Construction of Minimal Project Networks", IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL Volume 2, March, 1963, pps 24--36
B. Dimsdale and H. P. Flatt, "Project Evaluation and Selection", IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL Volume 2, September 1963, pps 200--217
B. Dimsdale and H. M. Markowitz, "A Description of the {SIMSCRIPT} Language", IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL Volume 3, number 1, 1964, pps 57--67
B. Dimsdale and K. Johnson, "Multiconic Surfaces", IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Volume 19, Number 6, November 1975, pps 523--529
B. Dimsdale and R. M. Burkley, "Bicubic Patch Surfaces for High-Speed Numerical Control Processing", IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, Volume 20, Number 4, July 1976, pps358--367
B. Dimsdale, "Convex Cubic Splines", IBM JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, Volume 22, Number 2, March 1978, pps 168--178
This interest in hyperdimensional space, that arose, as I recall it, as he consulted for several automobile manufacturers, is summarized here. A larger listing of his publications in the area of computer sciences may be found via the search on his name, B. Dimsdale, here .