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.

In 1966, Bright founded Computation Planning, Inc. (COMPLAN). This computation consulting firm focused on the analysis, design, programming and management of computation systems. Under Bright's management as president and technical director, COMPLAN concentrated its operations after 1975 on information security through cryptographic control. Bright co-invented a patented encryption system used by many major firms and government agencies for data security. His professional interest in encryption led to his active participation in the ANSI-X9.E9 Working Group on Financial Institution Cryptographic and Authentication Key Management.

Bright was also active in professional associations. In the Association for Computing Machinery, Bright served as Secretary (1962-1964), Vice-President (1964-1966), and Council Member at Large (1966-1978). He also served as the Technical Program Chairman for the 1964 ACM conference and as National Program Committee Chairman on several occasions. Bright served two terms on the AFIPS Board of Directors (1963-1965; 1972-1974), secretary and vice president of SHARE (IBM users' group), president of TUG (Philco users' group), and president (1970) and later member of the board of directors (1971), of the Association on Independent Software Companies.

From the guide to the Herbert S. Bright papers, 1924-1988, (University of Minnesota Libraries. Charles Babbage Institute. [cbi])