C Gordon Bell

1934 - 2024

C. Gordon Bell, a technology visionary whose computer designs for Digital Equipment Corporation fueled the emergence of the minicomputer industry in the 1960s, died May 17 at his home in Coronado, Calif. He was 89.

Bell was born in Kirksville on Aug. 19, 1934 to Chester Bell, an electrician, and Lola (Gordon) Bell, who taught grade school. He grew up helping with the family business, Bell Electric, repairing appliances and wiring homes. By his early teens he had acquired the skills of a journeyman electrician.

Mr. Bell was accepted into a dual program at MIT, receiving a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, both in electrical engineering and awarded in 1957. He received a Fulbright fellowship to study in Australia at the University of New South Wales. There, he met his first wife, Gwen Druyor. He proposed via an English Electric DEUCE computer as he sat at one terminal and she sat at another.

He was the second computer architect hired at Digital Equipment and designed several of their PDP machines. Later, he served as the company's Vice President of Engineering from 1972-1983, overseeing development of the VAX computer systems. Called the "Frank Lloyd Wright of computers" by Datamation magazine, Mr. Bell was the master architect in the effort to create smaller, affordable, interactive computers that could be clustered into a network, and championed efforts to build the Ethernet. He was among a handful of influential engineers whose designs formed the vital bridge between the room-size models of the mainframe era and the advent of the personal computer.

After stints at several other startup ventures, Mr. Bell became the head of the National Science Foundation's computers and information science and engineering group, where he directed the effort to link the world's supercomputers into a high-speed network that led directly to the development of the modern internet. He later joined Microsoft's nascent research lab, where he remained for about 20 years before being named researcher emeritus.

He authored 6 books on computer architecture, computing, and entrepreneurship and led efforts to preserve computing history as a co-founder of The Computer Museum and as a founding board member of the The Computer History Museum. In 1991, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. In 1992, he was the first recipient of the IEEE John von Neumann Medal.

"His main contribution was his vision of the future," said David Cutler, a senior technical fellow at Microsoft, who worked with Mr. Bell at both Digital and Microsoft. "He always had a vision of where computing was going to go. He helped make computing much more widespread and more personal."

Mr. Bell explained his formula for repeated technology successes. "The trick in any technology," he said, "is knowing when to get on the bandwagon, knowing when to push for change, and then knowing when it's dead and time to get off."

Mr. Bell is survived by his second wife, Sheridan Sinclaire-Bell of Coronado and San Francisco; a stepdaughter, Logan Forbes of Mountain View, Calif.; a sister, Sharon Smith of Bethany, Mo.; two children, Brigham Bell of Louisville, Colo., and Laura Bell of Hillsborough, N.J.; and four grandchildren.