GE Computer Department Alumni
Association Newsletter
November 2007
2008 Reunion Set for Chicago
Our next GE Computer Department Alumni Association Reunion will be held next year in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Friday and Saturday, the 26th and 27th of September – a beautiful time of year in a beautiful city. Check-in will be on Thursday, the 25th and check-out on Sunday, the 28th.
Room Reservations can be made by calling the hotel toll free at
(888) 421-1442 and referencing the GE Computer Department Alumni Assoc. group. We have a special rate of $210 per night, a $40 reduction from normal rates.Or Book On-line. You can also get a room by visiting the Hyatt check-in web site via the GE Alumni site: http://www.gecomputerdeptalumni.com/hyatt2008.html
We have heard from a number of people who are planning to attend, enough that we were confident in committing to a room block with the Hyatt. We will be sending out an "official" registration packet early next year, at which time you can fill out the registration form and send in your check. In the meantime, it is never too early to make your hotel reservations.
What’s on the Agenda?
There will be two half day programs on Friday and Saturday mornings. The current meeting agenda includes the following topics, all subject to change:
, Professor, Kellogg Graduate School, Northwestern University, who attended our last reunion and has been gathering information on GE decision making as it related to selling the computer business.
- Computer Department innovations that have survived the test of time, including MULTICS / UNIX, data base management, communications processors, multiprocessing, etc. How these innovations are used today.
- GE’s pioneering efforts in time sharing and the impact it had on the industry and many of our alumni.
- What’s new in internet security, WiFi, managing virtual teams with the help of the internet, and the internet in general.
- A presentation by Dr. John Joseph,
On the entertainment side, we are planning a boat ride with lunch, much as we had at the SFO reunion, and we will have a banquet on Saturday night with entertainment, as usual.
And remember that Chicago has many attractions to enjoy. Our hotel is on the Chicago River, very close to Lake Michigan and the beautiful Magnificent Mile. There are wonderful museums, the art institute, the aquarium, the planetarium, shopping as good as it gets and an abundance of great restaurants. A fun city at a perfect time of year.
Our thanks go out to Pete Repenning
(prepenning@greencycle.net) who lives in Chicago and is chairing this reunion, and to Bob Connors (rconn8444@aol.com) who is our program chairman.
Anticipated Costs
As mentioned above, the room rate we have negotiated is $210 per night, plus applicable taxes. There will also be a banquet charge of
approximately $65 per person and a cash bar. There will be a charge for the boat cruise and lunch, which is yet to be determined.The good news is that Chicago is easily accessible from all parts of the country, and air fares should
be reasonable.
Web Site
As you know, we have our own web site at
http://www.gecomputerdeptalumni.org/ where we will try to keep information on the reunion updated on a real time basis. Please check the web site regularly for new information.
Action!!!
Get out your 2008 calendars and mark the dates now, Sept. 25th to 28th. Make your room reservations. If you have any feedback on the agenda items, and/or would like to participate, contact Curt Hare at
cchare@cox.net or 480-998-1743. We’ll be sending out the registration packet in early Spring, 2008.Adventures with Dwarfs
A new book, My Adventures with Dwarfs: A Personal History in Mainframe Computers,
authored by Russ McGee, has been released by the Charles Babbage Institute. The Charles Babbage Institute Collections says about it:
"A well-written memoir by a mainframe pioneer. Russ McGee relates his entry into computing during the early 1950s at Computer Control Company and at Hanford, and his early experiences with the user group SHARE and the IBM 709. The middle chapters tell the story of General Electric’s computer division in Phoenix AZ, including accounts of his work on GE 600-series, the Weyerhauser database system, and the virtual machine monitor. Also discusses McGee’s development of structured programming techniques. The appendices include technical material on the structure and programming of stored-program computers."
Get the actual book in Adobe PDF format at:
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/hostedpublications/index.html.
GE Computer Department Alumni Association
P.O. Box 9315, Phoenix, AZ 85068-9315
Officers:
Curt Hare, President cchare@cox.net
Phil Howard, VP-Communications
pch@acrhq.comGeorge Snively, Treas
gsnively@compuserve.comAdvisory Board
Vic Casebolt vic@caseboltphoto.com
Bob Conners
rconn8444@aol.comBill Duster (Past President)
Nelson French
nfrenchjr@aol.comJoe McGoldrick
joanyjoe@aol.comNate Norris
nbnorris@aol.comWarren Prince
wprince525@aol.comWeb Site
Jay Conne, Webmaster jconne@bigplanet.com
Art Coombes, Tech Sup
art@ifn.netWarren Prince, Moderator
wprince525@aol.com
In Memoriam
John Francis Couleur, 82 of Scottsdale passed away Aug. 25, 2007 in Scottsdale. Born July 7, 1925 in Chicago, IL the son of Edwin and Gertrude Couleur, he spent his youth in California. John graduated Summa Cum Laude from SMU, was in the Navy V12 program and later served as an Air Force Lieutenant in the
Korean conflict. John's accomplishments were many. A pioneer in the information technology industry, he served in executive management positions at General Electric, Honeywell and University Computing among others and had over 40 patents to his name. Throughout his life, John was an inventor and entrepreneur, and at the time of his death, he was running a company he had started to provide mapping software to the utility industry. John is survived by his wife Lucy, daughter Jessica, sons John and Peter, granddaughter Katy and a brother Edwin.