Dr Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr, Turing Award winner has died at the age of 91

[John Z]

Of interest to computer and programing enthusiasts:

Dr Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr, leader of IBM's OS/360 project and the man chiefly responsible for the prevalence of the eight-bit byte, has died at the age of 91.

See full article here:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/fred_mythical_man_month_brooks/ 


John Z

[CandCPlusPlus]

Sad to hear this.

I did not previously know the story behind the 8-bit byte and how it relates to ASCII. Even today, the C char type is exactly one byte or 8 bits. He changed it from 6 bits to 8 bits.

The wiki article is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks