Jacob Rabinow (1910-1999) interview: November 23, 1970
Richard R. Mertz · 1999
Jacob Rabinow, born Jacob Rabinovich in the Soviet Ukraine in 1910, moved with his family to Siberia in 1914 where his father ran a shoe factory. In 1919, they moved to China, where his father died. With his mother and brother he then emigrated to the United States, where his mother established a corset shop in New York City. He did well as a student and also began to build and repair radios. As an undergraduate at the City College of New York, he changed his name to Rabinow and majored in electrical engineering, despite warnings that American firms did not hire Jewish engineers. After graduation in 1934, he worked at diverse jobs until he was hired by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1938. At NBS he first calibrated flowmeters and then, with the outbreak of World War II, designed proximity fuses for Army bombs and rockets. To calculate the velocity of the falling fuses, he devised an acceleration integrator. He also worked on bombing techniques. After the war, Rabinow came to know people at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and to work on input/output devices for computers. He invented the magnetic particle clutch used in tape and disk drives. Rabinow also became interested in a microfilm reader envisioned by Vannevar Bush called the Rapid Selector; this led to his more general interest in reading machines. Moreover, he assisted the Bureau of the Census in writing specifications for its UNIVAC computer. In about 1949 or 1950, Rabinow invented a magnetic disk file for computer memory and began to look at tape drives and wire recorders. He also worked on card sorters and card punches for the Bureau of the Census. He worked primarily on ordnance projects at the Bureau of Standards, and paid careful attention to the possible use of transistors in proximity fuses. In 1954, ordnance work at the Bureau of Standards was put under a military commander and Rabinow quit to form his own company, Rabinow Engineering. Projects included the development of automatic winding equipment and test equipment for Sprague Electric, design of a letter sorter later built by Burroughs, and of a digital computer, both for the U.S. Post Office, and construction of reading machines for RCA, UNIVAC, and others. When servicing machines began to require too much staff and travel, Rabinow sold his company, remaining a consultant. The firm eventually became part of Control Data Corp. Rabinow describes at some length his magnetic disk file, the selective multiple punch he developed for the Bureau of the Census, and his instantaneous reversing motor. His most important contribution was work on reading machines and optical character recognition. He also mentions other computer developments at the Bureau of Standards, important inventors and patent lawyers in computer history, and the National Inventors Council of the Department of Commerce. People noted several times include Samuel Alexander, Allen V. Astin, J.V. Atanasoff, Vannevar Bush, Harry Diamond, Hugh L. Dryden, J.Presper Eckert, Joe Genovese, Sidney Greenwald, John W. Mauchly, Bill McClean, and David Rabinow.