George Stibitz

George Robert Stibitz was born on April 20, 1904, in York, Pennsylvania. He spent much of his childhood exploring how things worked. Once, he nearly set the house on fire by overloading a circuit with an electric motor. Recognizing his potential, his parents enrolled him in Moraine Park, an experimental high school with a focus on science and engineering. That early spark carried through his studies. He earned a degree in mathematics from Denison University in 1926, followed by a master’s in physics from Union College in 1927, and completed a Ph.D. in mathematical physics at Cornell University in 1930. 

Stibitz joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City as a research mathematician. The growing complexity of the telephone network meant endless calculations, all done by hand or with clunky mechanical calculators. In 1937, while exploring new ideas at home, Stibitz borrowed a few telephone relays from the Bell Labs stockroom and assembled a binary adder on his kitchen table using batteries, flashlight bulbs, and tin cut from a tobacco can. The result was the Model K, a simple device that used binary arithmetic to perform calculations and lit up to display results in ones and zeros. By early 1940, Bell had funded a full-scale version called the Complex Number Calculator, built to handle complex mathematical operations with speed and precision. That same year, Stibitz demonstrated the first instance of remote computing by transmitting problems from Dartmouth College to the machine in Manhattan using a telegraph, receiving answers back within seconds.

During World War II, he worked with the National Defense Research Council, developing a series of increasingly advanced relay-based computers to support military operations. Machines like the Model II and Model V could store instructions on punched tape and perform repeated complex calculations, proving especially useful in plotting weapons trajectories. After the war, Stibitz moved to Vermont and began consulting in applied mathematics, continuing to work on computing problems across both public and private sectors. In the 1960s, Dartmouth Medical School invited him to apply his expertise to biomedical research. There, he developed simulations to study the movement of oxygen in the lungs, brain cell activity, and the transport of drugs and nutrients through the body. He retired in 1972 but remained active as professor emeritus, often exploring new ways to use computers in science and creative expression. In 1964, he received the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award for his foundational contributions to digital computing.

Over the course of his life, Stibitz held 38 patents, covering everything from computing systems to a stereophonic organ. His innovations received significant acclaim, including induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1983 for his invention of the first digital computer. Reflecting on the elegance of mathematics, he once said, “Part of the charm in solving a differential equation is in the feeling that we are getting something for nothing. So little information appears to go into the solution that there is a sense of surprise over the extensive results that are derived.” Though much of his work began as quiet experiments, Stibitz’s legacy became a cornerstone of the computer age. Stibitz passed away in 1995.