Computer pioneer Gordon Bell, who as an early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) played a key role in developing several influential minicomputer systems and also co-founded the first major computer museum, died Friday, according to Bell Labs veteran John Maschy. Mashi announced Bell’s death in a social media post Tuesday morning.
“I am very sad to report [the] the death on May 17th at the age of 89 of Gordon Bell, a renowned computing pioneer, founder of the Computer Museum in Boston and a force behind @ComputerHistory here in Silicon Valley and a good friend since 1980,” Mashi wrote in his announcement. “He has passed away of aspiration pneumonia in Coronado, California.”
Bell was a key figure in the history of computing and a notable champion of the history of technology, founding the Computer Museum in Boston in 1979, which later became the heart of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with his wife Gwen Bell. He was also the namesake of ACM’s prestigious Gordon Bell Award, established to spur innovation in parallel processing.
Born in 1934 in Kirksville, Missouri, Gordon Bell earned a degree in electrical engineering from MIT before being hired in 1960 by DEC founders Ken Olson and Harlan Anderson. As the second computer engineer hired at DEC, Bell worked on various components for the PDP-1 system, including floating-point routines, tape controllers, and a drum controller.
Bell also invented the first UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter) for serial communication during his time at DEC. He went on to create several influential DEC systems, including the PDP-4 and PDP-6. In the 1970s, he played a key role in overseeing the aforementioned VAX minicomputer line as engineering manager, with Bill Strecker serving as the primary architect of the VAX architecture.
After retiring from DEC in 1983, Bell remained active as an entrepreneur, policy advisor, and researcher. He co-founded Encore Computer and helped establish NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.
In 1995, Bell joined Microsoft Research, where he studied telepresence technologies and served as the subject of the MyLifeBits life logging project. The initiative aimed to realize Vannevar Bush’s vision of a system that could store all the documents, photos and audio that a person has experienced in a lifetime.
Bell has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the National Medal of Technology from President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 1992.
“He was immensely helpful”
As news of Bell’s death spread on social media on Tuesday, industry veterans began sharing their memories and condolences. Former Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie wrote: “I cannot adequately describe how much I loved Gordon and respected what he did for the industry. I first met him as a kid at Digital (I was at DG then) when he and Dave were working on the VAX. So brilliant, so calm, so optimistic about what the future might hold.”
Ozzy also recalled Bell’s role as a helpful mentor. “The number of times Gordon and I met while at Microsoft — acting as an advisor, helping me with the challenges I faced — is countless,” he wrote.
Former Windows VP Stephen Sinofsky also paid tribute to Bell on X, writing, “He was immeasurably useful at Microsoft, where he was a founding advisor and later the full-time head of Microsoft Research. He advised and supported countless researchers, projects and product teams. He was always supportive and insightful without words. He never hesitated to provide insight and a few sparks in so many of the external sites that were so important to the evolution of Microsoft.”
“His memory is a blessing to so many,” Sinofsky wrote in his tweet in memory of Bell. “His impact on all of us in technology will be felt for generations. May he rest in peace.”
