Artifact Details

Title

Crooks, Bill (William) oral history

Catalog Number

102702016

Type

Document

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.

Date

2008-11-13

Contributor

Crooks, William (Bill), Interviewee
Gardner, Tom, Interviewer; Editor

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

28 p.

Format

PDF

Category

Transcription

Subject

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

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Lot Number

X5010.2009