Bright, Herbert S. (Herbert Samuel), 1919-1986

Herbert Samuel Bright (13 September 1919 - 28 November 1986) earned a BS in Physics from the University of Michigan in 1943 and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California-Berkeley in 1963. After completing his BS, Bright became an electrical engineer working with radar and gunfire control systems at Western Electric. Three years later, he joined the electrical engineering department of the Antenna Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley.

In the early 1950s, Bright began developing general purpose computer applications while chief of the laboratory instrumentation branch at the Radiological Defense Laboratory. As supervising scientist of the computational planning section at Westinghouse Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, he worked on FORTRAN applications for large scale engineering calculations. He continued his work with FORTRAN when he joined the Data Processing Group of CBEMA as director of engineering. Bright later served as Secretary of the ANSI-X3.4.3 FORTRAN Working Group from its inception in 1963 to the publication of American Standard FORTRAN in 1966. At Philco, Bright was responsible for the planning design, development, distribution and maintenance of all product-line software. This included a wide range of programs such as assemblers, compilers, operating systems, and generalized applications. While at Philco, Bright served as the chair of the Philco Corporate Technical Committee on Computer Aids to Engineering and Research, TAC-63-8, from its inception in 1963 to 1965. As director of programming at Informatics, Inc., Bright completed systems programming studies and development projects.

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