Les Kilpatrick interview: May 17, 1973
Robina Mapstone · 1999
Les Kilpatrick was born in 1923 and received his undergraduate degree in engineering from Texas Tech University. In 1948, he received his master's of electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While at MIT, Kilpatrick worked in the project meteor Laboratories doing work on the development of digital multiplex telemetry systems. This was Kilpatrick's first introduction to anything digital. In 1948, he left MIT for California and a job at North American Aviation. At North American, Kilpatrick became involved with a division that was developing a guidance system for a Navajo missile. Kilpatrick specifically worked on digital computing equipment to solve guidance equations that involved inertial navigation. He comments on his work with telescopes and the problem of a gyro-stabilized platform. Discusses Floyd Steele and his group which built the Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer (MADDIDA). This was to be the first divergence between East and West Coast computer design approaches. The west coast did everything by logical equations and with synchronous machines while the east coast drew block diagrams and used asynchronous machines. Kilpatrick was involved in building two vacuum tube machines, the North American Programmed Automatic Computer (NATPAC) and the North American Digital Analyzer (NATDAN). NATPAC was a general purpose computer developed to punch up star tapes. Also comments on the reliable COMPuter (RECOMP) and the Field Artillery data Computer (FADAC) (serial computers), and disk memory developed at North American. Kilpatrick discusses his involvement with transistors in 1950-1951. Transistors were used in the NATDAN, the first transistorized airborne computer that was ever built in the world. In 1959 Kilpatrick left North American and started CalComp, California Computer Products. CalComp was formed in 1953 with one person, Bob Morton. Not until 1959 did the others---Gene Seid, Ron Cone, Bob Morton, and Gene Beckman---join full time. The first contracts consisted of government cost-plus-fixed-fee development contracts. This four engineer, one lawyer team received its first contract from Frankfort Arsenal in 1960 to develop a portion of the FADAC system, a display unit. The first real sizeable contract came from NASA which needed a timing control device to go on the Nimbus satellite, a weather observation satellite. By 1962, CalComp switched from government contract work to primarily producing plotters which made more money. Kilpatrick discusses further financial developments of the CalComp, other contracts and alliances that were made with other companies to design and build a product. Those mentioned in the interview include Gene Seid, Floyd Steele, Dick Tanaka, Willia Ware, George Canova, and Glenn Hagen.