Duncan L. MacDonald earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in 1944. He was in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1964 and was responsible for maintenance repair operation of radar systems and electronic equipment. He attended the radar school at M.I.T. during this time. From 1946 to 1951 he was project engineer at Automatic Electric Company in Chicago. He joined Consolidated Electrodynamics Corporation in 1951 where he worked as a project engineer on the administration and design of digital data processing systems, analog-to-digital conversion techniques and wind tunnel data reduction systems. He remained there until 1954. As part of ElectroData (which split off from CEC), MacDonald worked on various computer and magnetic tape systems, including the tape transports associated with the B205 and initial development of the datafile, a large magnetic tape file.
From the guide to the Burroughs Corporation records. Duncan L. MacDonald papers, 1955-1964, (University of Minnesota Libraries. Charles Babbage Institute. [cbi])
