Item Details

Description

The Paul R. DesJardins collection contains material collected by DesJardins primarily during his work at North American Aviation (NAA), Allen-Babcock Computing (ABC), and Nucleus International. The records span 1947 through 2003 with the bulk of the collection being from 1956 to 1993. One main focus of the material in this collection is the development of the RUSH (Remote Use of Shared Hardware) time-sharing system, which DesJardins managed as principal designer at ABC. RUSH was built on IBM’s PL/I programming language, and this collection holds a significant amount of material on PL/I’s development--primarily by joint efforts between IBM and SHARE--as well. Forms of documentation in this collection for both RUSH and PL/I include technical reports, specifications, manuals, committee proceedings, and correspondence. The collection’s records relating to DesJardins’ work at North American Aviation and Nucleus International are fewer in quantity compared to the Allen Babcock material, but they are useful for gaining a more comprehensive idea of DesJardins’ career. Types of material from NAA and Nucleus International include internal correspondence, manuals, training and course material, technical papers, notebooks, and internal committee reports, such as reports from NAA’s Hardware Committee. Lastly, this collection holds various publications that DesJardins collected as a sort of reference library for different projects, interests, and work. Included are technical papers, newsletters, conference and seminar proceedings, manuals, reference guides, specifications, and promotional material. Much of these publications relate to software design and the use of programming languages, such as Fortran and BASIC. Many of the publications in this part of the collection were published by IBM. The collection’s earliest publication, a paper titled “Planning and Coding of Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument,” was published in 1947 and written by Herman H. Goldstine and John von Neumann. Biographical/Historical Note Paul R. DesJardins is notable for his work as a programmer, particularly in aerospace applications, operating systems, time-sharing systems, databases, and other industry applications and programs. He graduated from St. Louis University in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering, then studied numerical analysis at UCLA Extension. At the beginning of his career, DesJardins worked in the aerospace industry doing application programming, aircraft design, flight testing, and trajectory analysis for Chase Aircraft Company, Redstone Arsenal, the United States Army, and North American Aviation (NAA). DesJardins was with the army from 1950 to 1953, where he worked in missile trajectory analysis, aircraft flight safety, maintenance, and parts procurement. After the army, DesJardins was employed at NAA from 1954 to 1965 in the Missile Division, where he worked as the supervisor of flight test data analysis, and as the director of the Computer Services Division. He was involved in space flight analysis, celestial mechanics, lunar landing studies, and the NAA’s Hardware Committee. After leaving the NAA, DesJardins worked for Allen-Babcock Computing (ABC) from 1965 to 1972 as the vice president of systems and programming. While at ABC, he was the principal designer of RUSH (Remote Use of Shared Hardware), a time-sharing system for the IBM System/360 Model 50 that used the PL/I language, and contributed to the development of other instructions and applications for a variety of industries. DesJardins worked as a database application consultant from 1973 to 1986, then worked for Nucleus International (formerly Marcus) into the 1990s. While at Nucleus, DesJardins co-designed a bit vector coding method that was patented as the Bit String Compressor with Boolean Operation Processing Capability in 1991. Outside of work, DesJardins was active in the IBM user group SHARE as a program chairman and board of directors member. He was also a national Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) lecturer on application-specific programming in 1969. DesJardins passed away in 2007.

Level of description

Folder

Date

1947-2003, 1956-1993

Publisher

Computer History Museum (Publisher)

Extent

12.5 linear feet in 10 record cartons

Subject

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Programming (Electronic Computers)

Collection title

Paul R. DesJardins collection

Credit

Gift of Al Kossow

Catalogue number

102733966

Lot number

X4578.2008