Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Heinz Billing Passed Away

Heinz Billing in 2012, photo by Mark Bluhm

German computer pioneer Heinz Billing has passed away on January 4th, aged 102. A contemporary of Konrad Zuse, Billing developed the G1, G2, G1a, and G3 mainframe computers, which were used for astronomical calculations at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen from 1952-1972. He also did pioneering work in the field of data storage, having developed his own variant of a magnetic drum memory in 1948. In the 1970s, he left the field of computing and moved on to become one of the leading experts on gravitational waves. Rest in peace, Mister Billing.

The G3 computer

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