One of the most challenging tasks given me was that of trying to create an environment conducive to creativity and innovation among the professional technical staff . Paul Schumann, Jr., at our Austin laboratory, had begun by establishing CREATIVITY, an on-site journal for the professionals there. That seemed to be a good start so that, at several other development labs, other journals were developed. We named ours INNOVATIONS.
In those publications there appeared various articles of information on what-to, how-to, where-to, and when-to. Sometimes those articles were derived from the technical and non-technical press. At other times, de-briefing the reader, there were articles written by attendees at a technical symposia. Book reviews and stories of perserverance and success (and failures, too!) were published in an effort to help release the "creative juices" in the readership.
Now looking at those issues, I have selected a few to illustrate the flavor of the periodical. Here are some news (news then) items, humorous accounts, and others to support my persistent belief that if the subject is treated pleasantly, learning will be facilitated (I mean - to show that "math IS fun! or that THINKING is not so hard.)
BLUE ? TRY CHOCOLATE
A link between the sweet tooth and mood has been discovered at MIT. People who snack on carbohydrates feel better and less depressed because those kinds of food increase the level of serotonin in the brain's synapses.
Remember the short item, "Blue? Try Chocolate," in the last issue of Innovations? It mentioned that people who snack on carbohydrates feel better because the level of serotonin in the brain's synapses is increased. If what we eat influences our mood, maybe it also affects our proficiency and creativity.
Scientists have reported that food and when we eat it can make us drowsy or alert, lethargic or energetic, irritable or serene. In theory, we can manipulate our food intake to influence our intellectual capacity. Although these biochemical relationships are not fully understood, studies with animals and, more recently, with people, seem to confirm that steak at dinner can keep us awake because protein tends to pep us up. And that doughnut in the morning? It can relax us later on because sugary foods calm us down.
Dr. Judith J. Wurtman, a nutritional biologist at M.I.T, and wife of Dr. Richard J. Wurtman, a principal in neuro- chemical research, has written a guide for eating according to external requirements. Her book, Managing Your Mind and Mood through Food, offers an interesting approach to temporarily altering one's mood, for example, before making a speech or giving a presentation.
Dr. Wurtman's book features three brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters: serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. All are derived from the amino acids, tryptophan and tyrosine. She calls serotonin the "feeling good" chemical because it tends to make us calm, soothed and more focused; however, it sometimes makes us sleepy. A deficiency can cause us to feel grouchy, anxious and somewhat disjointed.
Dopamine and norepinephrine are called catacholamines, a class of brain chemicals associated with the "fight or flight" response, the vestigial reaction to danger, and they tend to increase our alertness and energize us.
Theoretically, the process is: foods rich in carbohydrates allow tryptophan to reach the brain, leading to more serotonin and a relaxed feeling; foods rich in protein trigger the release of tyrosine, leading to more catacholamines and an energetic feeling.
Dr. Wurtman tested her hypotheses with her weight-loss patients, many of whom she called "carbohydrate cravers." Among her findings was that fruits and vegetables, the so-called complex carbohydrates, are not particularly useful for creating serotonin. It is easily produced by simple carbohydrates, such as pastas, jellies, jams, cookies, sodas, syrups and sugared cereals, none of which are permitted in a weight reduction diet.
According to Dr. Wurtman's findings, a high-protein breakfast, with a caffeine-containing beverage, makes us alert and productive. Lunch may be even more important because of the normal, biological rhythms of the day. Since dopamine and tyrosine decline after a morning of intense mental activity, a protein lunch stimulates the brain to produce more, thereby helping to sustain an "up" feeling. At dinner, carbohydrates should dominate because most people anticipate a relaxed evening. A snack before bed? Not milk, according to Dr. Wurtman. She recommends cookies, particularly with water or soda.
And what about fats in a "mood alteration" diet? Studies have shown that fats slow digestion and delay amino acids from reaching the brain. It seems that fats, in addition to calories, not only contribute to potential heart disease and some cancers but make us grumpy, as well.
It appears, from Dr. Wurtman's book, that she has demonstrated the profound effect diet can have on our mood. If it isn't counter to prescribed regimens or medical restrictions, you may wish to consider the following when you have a presentation to give or you just want to relax.
The enervating foods stimulate the brain chemicals norepinephrine and dopamine which keep us energized: eggs (reduce the yolk), lean meats, seafood, tofu, yoghurt, skim milk and low-fat cheeses.
The relaxing foods stimulate serotonin which induces relaxation and reduces stress and anxiety: dry, sugary cereals, toast with jelly, jam or preserves, candy low in fat but high in sugar (avoid high-fat chocolate), cookies low in fat and pastas with low-fat sauces.
It may be that not only are we what we eat, we behave accordingly.
Seems that is now a matter of common knowledge. But in 1987 it was meant to guide the development engineer. (As I recall, doughnuts and cofee were commonly available at early morning conferences -- maybe that was a reason for the strong arguments and the calming agreements.)
Another point of concern to the would-be innovator is that of communication. So often creativity begins in the individual but is nurtured through the interaction with others. Important is the awareness of the benefits of articulate, precise speech and writing. (I am pleased to read weekly in my local newspaper an essay by the nationally syndicated columnist, James J. Kilpatrick, who examines contemporary usage of the English language.) This view that verbal communication is a significant element in today's team-oriented work force, led to a series of columns. Here is a sample:-
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ?
It's What You Say and How You Say It
"Neither can his mind by thought to be in tune, whose words do
jarre; nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous."
- Ben Jonson
Do you say "meaningful", "scenario", "perfectly candid", "point in time", "solution the problem", "foreign imports", "arguably" ? If so, you are among the many who in the overuse of such words or
expressions have come to repeat phrases without meaning. Examine these examples and you should find redundancy ("foreign" imports), laziness ("solution" ? why not "solve" ?), inaccuracy ("point" in
time ? not "moment" ?), etc. Do you know the difference between "further" and "farther", "in" and "into", "fewer" and "less", "it's" and "its" ? If not, count yourself among the many murderers of the English Language.
W. T. Rabe, college relations director at Lake Superior State College in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, fed up with such abuse of the English Language, began publishing an annual list of "banished" words and phrases. The first list, appearing about ten years ago, you may have seen as a poster which heaped ridicule on such phrases. The offensive items in the 1987 list were selected from more than 3,000 submissions received from contributors from across the United States and several foreign countries.
In Mountain View, California, the group SPELL (Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature) provides a similar service, but at a more basic level, according to William Penn, former professor of business at San Jose State University and the organization's first vice-president. This society, founded in 1984, publishes "Goof/Proofer", a 44-page booklet, which suggests solutions to such perplexities as when to use "fewer" instead of "less", "further" instead of "farther" and so forth. This booklet contains the quotation from Mark Twain: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."
"We're concerned with basic, good grammar - and you'd be surprised how many people out there are interested in good grammar," says Penn. "It's our notion that if you don't know spelling and you don't know rules about words and sentences, you can't really have very clear ideas about things."
The society's newsletter is called Spell/Binder. It includes short pieces on fine points of grammar - for example, whether "due to" or "because of" is correct - and a section entitled "Murderer's Row - a list of grammar violations in the media and elsewhere spotted by society members. (Violators are sent "goof
cards" citing their transgression).
Incidentally, Spell/Binder prefers "because of".
Violations and the violators include Bryant Gumbel (NBC's "Today") for saying "between Jane and I", Peter Jennings (ABC) for saying "pay tribute to we colonials", a staff writer on the St. Louis
Globe-Democrat for an item including "Until the crucifiction, Fridays were coming and going in fine fashion", and a sign above a Richmond, Va. door with the frightening words "Door is ALARMED."
William Lutz, teacher of composition at the Camden, N. J., campus of Rutgers-The State University, heads the Committee on Public Doublespeak - an organization sponsored by the National Council of
Teachers of English. This organization of 53,000 elementary and secondary school and college English teachers is quite correctly concerned by the marked decline in the English language skills of
students displayed over the past decades. Each year, the committee selects winners for the Doublespeak Awards - public figures whose language is "notably deceptive and obscure." Here the term doublespeak is equivalent in meaning to what George Orwell meant in "1984": the use of meaningless language by public figures.
The 1975 Doublespeak Award went to PLO head Yasser Arafat whose reply to the charge that the PLO wanted to destroy Israel was: "We do not want to destroy any people. It is precisely because we
have been advocating coexistence that we have shed so much blood."
[Here is another example of doublespeak. In his program, Sunday Morning, Charles Kuralt attributed this story to Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige. A high-ranking official once responded to a subordinate's request for a raise by saying: "Because of the fluctuational predisposition of your position's productive capacity as juxtaposed to government standards, it would be monetarily injudicious to advocate an increment." The staff person said, "I don't get it." The official responded, "That's right." ]
The 1979 award went to the nuclear power industry for inventing such phrases as "energetic disassembly" to mean "explosion" and "rapid oxidation" to mean "fire."
Publications deeply concerned with the use (abuse ?) of the language include "The Woods-Runner" (reaches 950 subscribers),put out by The Unicorn Hunters, "Goof/Proofer" (for 1200 dues-paying
members), "The Quarterly Review of Doublespeak "(over 7,000 subscribers in the United States and 21 other countries), and "The Underground Grammarian "(edited by Prof. Richard Mitchell of
Glassboro State College in New Jersey).
Besides these publications which guard the language, over 40 "grammar hot lines" have sprung up across the country in the last dozen years, where a telephone call brings advice on grammar and
other language problems. The first Grammar Hotline Directory was published last year by the Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, Va.
Mr. Lutz has pointed out that "English has some nice ways of making distinctions - subtleties that add precision - and we don't want them to be lost in the din of advertising, big government and mass communication."
For the technical professional at IBM, indeed, for all IBMers, we should be vigilant in the appropriate use of the language and eager to improve our skills in our use. Further insights may be gained in a visit to our library.
Prior to this assignment as Editor of Innovations, I was an IBM Faculty Loan Program assignee to the University of Maryland's Center for the Minorities in Science and Technology. An interesting 1 (school-)year assignment indeed. At one time I attended a seminar on Language. The following essay, based in part on that seminar was published later in Innovations.
Let me quote a passage from the June 8, 1987 column to make the point that the technical person in writing should treat the language as carefully as a mathematical expression should be treated. (The discussion related to an earlier article on the poetic use of "gentle" in Dylan Thomas's 1952 poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.")
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In grammatical terms, though, is "gentle" necessarily an adjective? Although it is almost always used as an adjective, it has also been used as an adverb since the early 1600s. "If you have a grammatical problem with the use of what appears to be an adjective after a non-copulative verb," writes Allan Curran of Boston, "I sympathize: so many of our memorable English teachers damned the analogous "Go slow.' Jacques Barzun, with good sense, encourages the use of the "short form of the adverb" after verbs of motion."
Let's go quick to Professor Barzun, who covered this subject in 1986 in "A Word or Two Before You Go"... He says predicate adjectives follow copulative, or linking, verbs, such as "be" or become. ("Be gentle": "Become famous"). Beyond that, however, Prof. Barzun tells me: "Verbs of motion and sensation take adverbs that do not have the '-ly' ending - 'Go slow', 'Think fast', and so forth. Even though they lack the '-ly', these words are not predicate adjectives but adverbs."
I disagree with the professor, and agree with most of the readers who wrote in: the poet was using the adjective "gentle" to describe the condition he hoped his dying father would not be in, rather than to describe the method of his going, or dying. He chose to modify the person, which called for an adjective, and not to modify the action, which would usually have called for an adverb ending in "-ly".......
...Interpreters use these grammatical explanations to show what the writer had in mind. If I go to a wine tasting and write, "They taste 'good', "the reader can tell I'm talking about about the wines; if I write, "They taste well," in the sense of the adverb "goodly", I am talking about the expert way the tasters are
slurping up the booze. Understanding grammar helps us figure out where the emphasis lies.
The writer who knows what he is thinking and what he is modifying, need not go through these interpretive gyrations. Consider John Hartford, writing the 1967 song "Gentle on My Mind", who know that "your door is always open," which is what "keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my memory; That keeps you ever gentle on my mind."
Facility in the use of language is an attribute of the educated person. Do you say what you mean ? Do you mean what you say ? It is critical for the technical professional who often must articulate verbally: in writing and in speaking. Articles have appeared in past issues of Innovations to support and inform the readers in their quest for this facility. Future issues will continue to contain material on writing skills.
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Consider, for example, the confusion illustrated by Lewis Carroll's brilliant parody in "Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice Found There" -
"... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'."
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested. "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'."
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On A Gate': and the tune's my own invention."...
"But the tune isn't his own invention," she said to herself: "it's 'I give thee all, I can no more'."
(Be sure you say what you mean and mean what you say and that it is unambiguous)
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Two aspects of our language are its richness and apparent inconsistencies. If jargon in English raises doubts in the minds of a foreigner, imagine the feeling in the minds of a novice computer user who has to read your jargon. If you know of some of these singularities, share your examples with the editor. Here are a few to ponder:
Although the common noun COMMITTEE comes close and the proper noun TENNESSEE also comes close, there is only one common word in the language with the pattern of three consecutive pairs of identical letters - aabbcc - within the spelling of the word. Do you recognize the word ?
Most words have associated with them words whose meaning is opposite: up, down; heavy, light; and so on. There is one word in our language which has totally opposite meanings to itself. Do you know it ?
The answers to both questions are given elsewhere in this issue.
If today, Tuesday, I tell you that I will be out of the office "next Friday", do I mean the Friday of the current week ? or the Friday of the following week ? Would the question be arise if I said "this Friday" ?
What does the sign REALLY mean that reads "No Smoking Allowed" ? In your writings or speeches, do you really phrase your words for correct meaning ? Think about it.
Some years ago, a psychological test was used to distinguish between people with engineering aptitudes and those with an aptitude for mathematics. The subjects were asked to solve the following problem.
On a table next to a sink were two non-graduated flasks. One had a two-liter capacity, the other a five-liter capacity. The problem was to obtain six liters of water from the sink's faucet.
The first subject filled the two-liter flask twice, each time pouring off the water into the five-liter flask. After the two-liter flask was filled the third time, there was a total of six liters of water.
The second applicant filled the five-liter flask, emptied two liters into the smaller flask and discarded the water. This action was repeated. The one liter remaining in the five-liter flask was then poured into the empty two-liter flask, and the five-liter flask was refilled from the faucet, giving a total of
six liters of water.
Can you determine the aptitudes? The tester couldn't, so a second test was tried. The two flasks were placed in a cabinet, and the subjects were given the same problem: produce six liters of water.
The first subject took the flasks from the cabinet and repeated the maneuvers previously used to produce the six liters. The second subject went to the cabinet, removed the two flasks, placed them on the table exactly as they were in the first test and said that finished the test.
Now the tester knew that the first subject's aptitude was for engineering because the solution to the second problem was the same as the solution to the first.
The second subject was deemed to have the stuff from which mathematicians are made because the solution to the second problem was merely to reduce it to the first problem, whose solution was
already known.
Depending on our aptitudes, we tack differently toward the solution to a problem. It doesn't mean we're off course. It doesn't mean the other person is off course, either.
Some years ago, IBM installed a system at one of its large European accounts. This is what happened.
A homeowner who decided to winter in the south of Spain had his utilities turned off. Upon his return, he received a quarterly bill from the electric utility for £ 0.0.0, that is, zero pounds, zero shillings and zero pence. Naturally, he disregarded it.
Two weeks later, he received another bill for the same amount; again, he ignored it . Only after receiving a final cut-off notice, if he failed to pay the outstanding balance of £ 0.0.0, did he send a check in the amount of £ 0.0.0.
Another two weeks passed, and he received a polite note from the branch manager of his local bank asking him to drop by for "a chat." When he did, the manager asked for an explanation of the curious check for £ 0.0.0. The homeowner explained, "It's really quite simple. I had to stop the silly notices from the electric utility's computer demanding payment of £ 0.0.0. I sent a check for that amount, and the the notices stopped."
"Well," replied the manager, "that's very good for you. Unfortunately, when this bank's computer tried to process your check, my entire system was brought to a halt!"
The moral of this true incident could be that ALL the possibilities must be considered.
One often creates on the basis of what went before. Thus knowledge of the field of interest may be important. At the time of my editorship, the personal computer had been appeared and was beginning to have its impact on society. Books have since been written on that era. In Isssue 3 in 1988 we published this review, written by colleague and author, Dick Conklin, who himself had just seen published his "Power Portable Computing: The IBM PC Convertible" (Dick has written and edited several since, including "OS2: A Business Perspective.")
Blue Magic: The People, Power and Politics Behind the IBM Personal Computer by James Chposky and Ted Leonis (Facts on File, 460 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016).
This is the first book to tell the "PC story", starting with the early products that preceded the PC, all the way through to the PS/2 announcement. It focuses on the 12-member Boca Raton task force that designed the prototype PC, and the various engineering and marketing decisions that shaped the product. It also discusses the internal IBM politics that surrounded the PC before and after its arrival.
Blue Magic, described by its publisher as "an inside account" of the PC's development, is written by two men who were not associated with the IBM PC project. Their facts are derived from newspaper and magazine clippings and interviews with PC project managers who left IBM. Those managers did, however, play important roles in the engineering, manufacturing, and marketing of the first PC, although some details in the story are missing or incorrect. Much of the missing information could have been
provided by people who worked on other aspects of PC development -- most of whom still work for IBM in Boca.
Many key members of the early PC team are omitted. One is Jan Winston, who led the original 12-member task force that gave birth to the PC. Winston followed Bill Lowe as the Datamaster product
manager, and later was tapped by Lowe to lead the PC task force. Lowe appointed Don Estridge as permanent PC project head when the corporate go-ahead was received a few months later. Mel
Hallerman, the Chief Programmer who had an impact on much of the PC's software, is also missing.
The book says very little about the first application software packages that motivated people to buy the new machine. When the PC was announced in 1981 it offered a choice of three operating systems: IBM PC DOS (MS DOS came later), Digital Research's CP/M-86, and the UCSD p-System, by Softech Microsystems. Operating System/2 is jointly developed and marketed by both IBM and Microsoft, not Microsoft alone, as the book suggests.
A new publications design also contributed to the machine's success. The PC's smaller, looseleaf user guides were much more readable than most previous personal computer manuals, protected from dust and torn pages by slip cover enclosures.
The book confuses early IBM products and the processors they used. Blue Magic described the 1975-vintage IBM 5100 desktop computer as one with disk drives, but it used tape cartridges for storage.
The 5100 was not withdrawn, but was superceded by the 5110 (with a floor-mounted diskette unit), then the repackaged 5120 (with diskette drives built into the desktop unit). The 5120 was not an
aborted product, but was marketed for about a year and a half until the Datamaster product was announced (within a month of the PC). The book says that communication modems were not supported
on personal computers before 1978. The 5100, 5110 and 5120 all used modems to exchange data files and programs with other computers.
The Datamaster used the 8-bit Intel 8085 processor, not the 8088. The PC's 8088 had an internal 16-bit architecture, with an 8-bit external I/O bus. This gave the machine a faster processor with 1 Mb addressability, and it also supported 8-bit memory and other off-the-shelf components. Its cousin, the Intel 8086, featured a 16-bit data path both internally and externally. The 8086 wasn't introduced on the PC line until the Personal System/2 Models 25 and 30 came along in 1987.
Contrary to the book's description, the Apple II could be expanded by the addition of plug-in adapter cards. For example, Microsoft manufactured a "SoftCard" for the Apple, featuring a Zilog Z-80
processor and a pre-PC version of Microsoft BASIC.
The book has no figures or photographs, and would be improved with the addition of press clippings, press kit photos, early PC ads, pictures of the people interviewed, IBM organizational charts, etc.
In spite of a few mistakes and shortcomings, many IBMers will enjoy reading Blue Magic, recalling again the events of the 1980s that forever changed the computer industry.
To take some emphasis away from the serious task of innovation, I was allowed to indulge in my efforts to show that math and thinking can be fun. This translated into my managing a column FUN AND GAMES. Aimed to challenge, the column included items to amuse and puzzles to pique.
Here are a few examples (answers to be found elsewhere):-
IMAGINATION ... a keystone to inventiveness; to innovation; to creation. We all have an
imagination. Some of us have a more active or fertile imagination than others. One way to hone our imagination is through exercise.
Here are some exercise for you. If you have some to share, please send them to the Editor.
2. Imagine you are wearing a long-sleeved sweater. Pull it over your head, turning it inside out as you do. Now put the sweater on by putting your left arm into the original right sleeve and the right arm into the other sleeve. The label which was originally in the inside back neck is where now ? Inside front?
Outside front ? Inside back ? Outside back ?
3. You are seated in front of a mirror at the barber or beauty shop. Behind you is a mirror.The name of the beauty shop is painted on the glass front of the store. You see the reflection of the shop name off the rear mirror when you look into the mirror before you. Is the name read correctly or does it appear
reversed ?
FUN AND GAMES
5. This one is from "Statishare," the newsletter for the IBM statistical community, issued by the Statistical Competency Center, Rochester. At a class reunion, an old pal evasively tells you, "I have two children, and at least one of them is a boy." What is the probability that they are both boys?
6. If that one was easy, consider this one: Mr. Smith has two children and at least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? Mr. Jones also has two children, but the older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls?
7. Test your English skills. Punctuate and make sense of the following: that that is is that that is not is not that is that that is not is not that that is that that is is not that that is not is that not it is
8. "I see that your library shelf is well arranged. Is that two-volume boxed pair a set of identical books?" "Yes," replied my host. "In fact, each book has exactly 300 pages. The thickness of a side of a cover is 1/16 of an inch and 60 pages are 5/16 of an inch in thickness. If I were to tell you that a bookworm is at page 1 of volume 1 and will eat its way straight through (in the shortest way) to the final page of volume 2, can you tell me how many inches it will travel?"
Do you?
Stretch your deductive reasoning.
10. The following is a quotation from Albert Einstein in a code discovered by an unknown typist on a PC. Can you decipher it?
[rtgrvyopm pg ,rsmd smf vpmgidopm pg hps;d
drr, yp vjstsvyrtoxr pir she
11. If you drive your car up a one-mile hill at 30 mph, at what speed should you drive down the one mile on the other side to average 60 mph overall?
12. Where am I at the start of a hike, if I walk one mile due south, then one mile due east, then one mile due north and arrive back at my starting point ?
13. You meet three people. Each is known to be either a total liar or a total truth-teller. Since you don't know who is which, you ask the first person, "Are you a liar?" You don't understand his answer, so you ask the second person, "What did he say?" The second person reports that the first person said
that he was a liar. The third person immediately says that the second person is a liar. The first person then pops up and says about the last statement, "That's a lie!"
Question: Is the second person a liar or a truth-teller? Is the third person a truth-teller or a liar? What about the first person? Is he telling the truth?
15. Is it proper for a man to marry his widow's sister?
17. Do you write clearly, concisely, accurately? A recent newspaper item read, "The higher court today vacated the injunction restraining the police from interfering with the pickets opposing the distribution of pamphlets attacking the anti-tobacco league."
18. Students in my class were questioned about which subjects they liked and disliked, and the results were as follows:
Jim: "No. Actually, children from four families are playing there. Mine is the largest in number, my brother's is the next largest, my sister's the next largest and my cousin's is the fewest in number. They are playing tag, but they would rather play baseball. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of them to make up two teams. Curiously the product of the numbers of the children in the four families equals my house number, which you know."
Paul: "Well, I'm a mathematician, so let me see if I can figure out how many children are in each of the families." Paul figures for awhile and then says, "Wait a minute, Jim. I need more information. Is there only a single child in your cousin's family?"
After Jim responds, Paul says, "Now I know precisely how many children are in each family."
So should you!
How many children are in each of the four families?
Dr. Paul Chessin assumed the editorship of Innovations after returning from a year's faculty loan at the University of Maryland's School of Engineering, where he was consultant to the Dean and worked in the Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering. He taught a short course, Math Can Be Fun, and developed a new course for graduating seniors, Personal Financial Planning and Management, which continues to be offered.
Paul's academic background includes two years of undergraduate work at the City College of New York and two years of postgraduate study at Columbia University. In between, he earned his A.B. and A.M. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, where he held a graduate fellowship in mathematics and astronomy. He received his Ph.D in mathematics from the University of Maryland, where he was the first recipient of the National Science Foundation's Science Faculty Fellowship in Mathematics.
During his pre-IBM years, Paul taught mathematics at the Cooper Union Institute for Technology, did optical research at the Burroughs Corporation and was principal mathematician at Westinghouse. During this time, he also found time to teach mathematics at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, act as book review editor for the Journal of SIAM and lecture on the early PBS-like series, "University of the Air."
In 1959, Paul joined IBM as an applied science representative, but it turned out to be one of the shortest assignments on record. Upon arrival, he was transferred to the Federal System Division's (FSD) newly established Project Mercury team. As an analyst/programmer, his programs provided projected and current capsule positional data, abort and re-entry decision parameters and post-flight analyses programs, some of which led to new geo-physical values concerning the shape of the earth and its atmospheric density.
Paul's next assignment, in 1962, returned him to the classroom at IBM's Science Research Institute. From there, he rejoined FSD as the manager of advanced technical education. He later relocated to San Jose and spent from 1965-1970 as the manager of the World Trade Corporation Systems Center. During that assignment, Paul traveled extensively, providing technical support to the various country marketing groups, managing development of WTC's Report Program Generator (RPG) for the IBM 1130 Computer and representing WTC product marketing in drafting the specifications that led to IBM System/7.
He then moved to WTC Headquarters in White Plains and assumed responsibility for systems engineering program development, including the development of a worldwide communication system to support the international systems engineering community. At this time, Paul often found himself an active participant in various task forces. His work on one which established new business practices and procedures for international marketing earned him an IBM Outstanding Contribution Award.
Entering the field in 1972 in New York City, Paul marketed the System/7 to the media and various advertising agencies and qualified for the Hundred Percent Club. He had the opportunity to make only one Club. His experience abroad and expertise with System/7 led to an invitation to join an international support group in Milan, Italy, and Paul accepted. He spent three years in Milan (and many hours in his box seat at La Scala) and then in 1978 moved to Boca Raton, where he became a product planner for the IBM Datamaster.
Paul's role included organizing a single system, with models to meet the requirements of each of the 21 countries in the former General Business Group/International (GBG/I), and establishing the first computer system to use the new multinational EBCDIC coded-character set, with a keyboard arrangement that met the requirements of 20 Latin-based countries, as well as those for the Japanese Katakana set. He also did the publications planning for the System/23 library -- more than 10 volumes for each of 13 languages.
During the early development of the IBM Personal Computer, Paul was a consultant to the development team for the character set, underlying keyboard arrangement and foreign standards. He then joined the team as a product planner, working not only on the PC but on the 8087 Math Co-processor, the PC Graphics Printer and Color Printer and the Print Screen Utility program. Just before leaving Boca for his Faculty Loan assignment, Paul headed the task force that resulted in the IBM Enhanced Personal Computer Keyboard.
Paul enjoys his hobbies, which include tackling British crosswords and problem solving, and his work, which includes Innovations. He'd like to hear from, you, his readers, about what you would like to see in its pages.
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