Executive Managed Seminal Computer System at IBM

A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Frederick P. Brooks Jr. liked building things, first laying foundations for modern computer systems at International Business Machines Corp. and later at the University of North Carolina, where he started the computer-science department. Dr. Brooks managed the development of IBM's System/360 family of compatible mainframe computers and then the software system that went with them during the 1960s. The computers became some of IBM's most popular models of the era, offering customers a choice of big or small computers with different processing speeds that could be used for both business and scientific tasks. The system was easy to expand since all the hardware ran off the same software, a departure from other systems that required software reprogramming when computers were added.