Crooks, Bill (William) oral history | Computer History Museum

Type

Text

Title

Crooks, Bill (William) oral history

Contributor

Crooks, William (Bill), Interviewee

Gardner, Tom, Interviewer; Editor

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Date

2008-11-13

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

28 p.

Description

William "Bill" Crooks was a contributing engineer in the development of the RAMAC disk drive. In April 1952 he was hired by IBM to work as a mechanical engineer in the fledgling IBM San Jose lab run by Rey Johnson. One of Crooks duties was to select the material and the coating for the RAMAC disks. In this oral history Crooks describes the process he went through to carry out this task. He also shares stories of Thomas Watson, Senior, and Thomas Watson, Junior, how the disk file became the RAMAC, and the IBM move from 99 Notre Dame to Cottle Road.

Subject

Crooks, William (Bill); RAMAC; IBM; Johnson, Rey; Stevens, Lou; Storage history

Collection Title

Oral Histories Online

Accession Number

102702016

Details