John Diebold, 79, a Visionary of the Computer Age, Dies

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/nyregion/27diebold.html

http://news.com.com/John+Diebold,+79,+a+visionary+of+the+computer+age,+dies/2100-1003_3-6009646.html

By JENNIFER BAYOT
Published: December 27, 2005

John Diebold, a visionary thinker whose early and persistent promotion of computers and other far-reaching innovations helped shape industrial development in America and beyond, died yesterday at his home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. He was 79.

The cause was esophageal cancer, said his nephew, also named John Diebold.

Mr. Diebold, who held degrees in business and engineering, was an evangelist of the future. In 1952, at a time when computers weighed five tons, his book "Automation" described how programmable devices could change the day-to-day operations of all kinds of businesses. Even the book's title was novel: it introduced the modern-day meaning of a term that had previously applied only to the mechanical handling of automobile parts at the Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Diebold (pronounced DEE-bold) made a career of recognizing relevant advances in technology and explaining them to the likes of A.T. & T., Boeing, Xerox and I.B.M. Through books, speeches and his international consulting firm, Mr. Diebold persuaded major corporations to automate their assembly lines, store their records electronically and install interoffice computer networks...

The man who built the monster was an idealist after all. That's so often the case; it's the lesson of the fictional Victor Frankenstein.

Esophageal cancer is a lousy effin' way to go, too.

May John Diebold, soaring visionary and fallible human, safely find transit through that great Night Deposit container in the sky.

--p!

principally IBM and equivalents, holds that Mr. Diebold, far from being a visionary, was an industry camp follower, long on industrial espionage and freely borrowing from others' creativity, and short on intellectual frontiersman-ship and professional integrity. All depends on whose pond you're swimmin' in I suppose.

http://www.knowmore.org/index.php/Diebold,_Incorporated

Diebold (voting machine manufacturer) was founded by Charles Diebold http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/history/default.htm) and was already 67 years old when John Diebold was born.

gotta be relatives

"...he started John Diebold Inc., an investment firm, in 1967. It financed such ventures as a computer leasing company and a well-known manufacturer of polling machines..."






that fake beard can't fool me same exact dude.