1.6 cubic feet in 4 boxes
Creator, Gilchrist, Bruce
By: Pat Hennessy, March 1991
ACQUISITION: The records were given to the Charles Babbage Institute by Bruce Gilchrist in 1990.
ACCESS: The collection is unrestricted.
COPYRIGHT: The Charles Babbage Institute holds the copyright to all materials in the collection, except for items covered by a prior copyright (such as published materials). Researchers may quote from the collection under the fair use provisions of the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).
Please cite the collections as follows: Bruce Gilchrist Papers, (CBI 76), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Gilchrist received his doctorate in meteorology at the University of London, and then joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1952. He became director of the computer center at the University of Syracuse, then joined IBM in 1959 where he became director of planning with the Service Bureau Corporation (1963-1965) and manager in the Data Processing Division (1965-1968). In the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) he served as secretary (1960-1962) and vice president (1962-1964). In 1966 he was elected president of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) and was the organization's executive director from 1968 to 1973, after which he became director of computing activities at Columbia University.
The collection consists of chronologically arranged files, dating from 1960 to 1973, which contain outgoing correspondence relating to Gilchrist's duties as an officer of AFIPS and the ACM. The correspondence consists largely of carbon copies. Most of the records prior to 1965 concern ACM and those after relate to AFIPS.