Talk:Charles Bachman

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Birth and Early Childhood

Charlie (as he likes to be known) was born in Manhattan Kansas on December 11, 1924. At this time his father was a football coach for Kansas and his mother was food services director (a college educated dietician). Charlie moved from Kansas to Florida and eventually East Lansing, Michigan as his father's coaching career progressed; Charles W. Bachman Sr. was head coach of Michigan State College (now the University) for 13 years and is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Military Service

Charlie (CWB III) graduated from high school in 1942 a year before turning 18. This allowed him to enlisting in the Army and enroll in officer candidate school. He served in the Pacific during WWII (1943-1944) as anti-aircaft gunnery officer on Biac Island in New Guinea. Charlie tells fond stories of getting his first computer in the army. It was a 2,000 pound analog computer which tracked airplanes and aimed the gun “ahead” of the aircraft through the application of integral calculus. It too six men to carry that computer and as he often says – if the planes flew straight we could hit them. But they didn’t so all we did was make a lot of noise.

Education and Early Career

Charlie graduated from Michigan State College in 1947 and then went to University of Pennsylvania for a Masters degree in engineering, thermodynamic systems. He then was married to Constance Arlene Hadley in 1959. That year they moved to Midland Michigan where Charlie began work in the Saran plant – later moving up to a manager of that facility and then progressing into the office of the Treasurer. In that position, Charlie was responsible for creating the mathematical models and managing the computers (people in that era) to do the calculations which would optimize the output of Dow’s many production streams. He is fond of mentioning that the first “solve” of those equations took 30-people 2 years. This delay (latency if you will) was the basis for purchasing Dow’s first computer. Charlie left Dow as head of IT and moved to Stanford Connecticut to work for General Electric. It was in this position that he and a group of close collaborators designed and built the world’s first integrated data store.

Charlie and his wife Connie are alive and well and living in Lexington, Ma. They recently returned to the East Coast after living in Tucson for the past 11 years (1996-2007).

Authored by his son Jonathan. A fellow Lexington resident, co-worker and #1 fan.