Chester Gordon Bell, author of the prototype of the personal computer, has died at the age of 89

**Chester Gordon Bell, a technological visionary whose computer developments for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) helped usher in the industry of mini-computers in the 1960s, died on Friday at his home in Coronado, California. He was 89. The cause was pneumonia, according to a statement from his family.**

**Chester Gordon Bell was born on August 19, 1934 in Kirksville, Missouri, to Chester Bell, an electrician who owned an appliance store, and Lola (Gordon) Bell, a primary school teacher. By the age of 12, he was already a professional electrician - installing the first home dishwashers, repairing engines, and disassembling mechanical devices to restore them. Bell graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957 with a master's degree in electrical engineering.**

**Gordon Bell was the chief architect in the development of more compact, affordable interactive computers that could be networked. At a time when computer companies such as IBM were selling multimillion-dollar mainframes, Digital Equipment Corporation aimed to introduce smaller, powerful machines that could be purchased for a fraction of that cost. In 1960, Bell joined the company as an engineer. Here he worked on developing appropriate architectures and subsystems.**

**The result of this work was the 12-bit PDP-8 computer, introduced in 1965 for $18,000. This system was considered the first successful mini-computer on the market. More importantly, DEC mini-computers were sold to scientists, engineers, and other users who interacted directly with the machines in an era when corporate computers were not accessible to such users and were housed in data centers.**

**Due to disagreements with DEC management, Gordon Bell took a 6-year leave of absence, during which he taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In 1972, he returned to the company as vice president of engineering.**

**It was then that he formulated the law of computer classes. It states that approximately every decade, progress in semiconductors, data storage systems, programming platforms, network, and interface technologies leads to the formation of a new, cheaper class of computers, resulting in new types of use and the creation of a new industry.**

**Upon returning to DEC, Gordon Bell led the development of the new VAX 780 computer architecture. The fast, powerful, and efficient mini-computer was a huge success, boosting sales that made DEC the world's second largest computer manufacturer in the early 1980s.**

**Yet the atmosphere at DEC remained unfavorable for Bell. In March 1983, he suffered a serious heart attack and could have died if not for the efforts of Bob Palfer, the company's vice president, who saved him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In the summer of 1983, Gordon Bell retired.**

**Later on, Bell founded the companies Encore Computer and Ardent Computer. In 1986, he delved into the world of state politics when he joined the National Science Foundation and led the effort on a supercomputer network that led to an early iteration of the Internet called the National Research and Education Network.**

**In 1987, Bell established the annual award in his name to promote and develop leading technologies in high-performance achievements.**

**Subsequently, Chester Gordon Bell moved to California, where he became a Silicon Valley angel investor, and in 1991 he became an advisor to Microsoft, which was opening its first research lab in Redmond, Washington. In 1995, Bell joined Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Lab full-time. There he worked on MyLifeBits, a database designed to collect all information about his life - articles, books, CDs, letters, emails, music, home movies, and videos - into a cloud-based digital database.**

**Mini-computers have left an important mark in the history of computing, just like the name of their chief designer.**

**Chester Gordon Bell is survived by his second wife, Sheridan Sinclair-Bell, whom he married in 2009; his son Brigham and daughter Laura Bell, both from his first marriage; his stepdaughter Logan Forbes; his sister Sharon Smith; four grandchildren.**

Source: nytimes