The Tech World Remembers Jerry Merryman Who Was an Inventor of the Calculator

cageymaru

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Born June 17, 1932; Jerry Merryman was a brilliant inventor whom others could call upon for information on any subject. By age 11, Mr. Merryman was the Hearne, TX radio repairman. "'He'd scrap together a few cents to go to the movies in the afternoons and evenings and the police would come get him out ... because their radios would break and he had to fix them,' said Merryman's wife, Phyllis Merryman." He wasn't a braggart or boastful; even though he would work on projects at his home like a motorized telescope that automatically tracked the planets.

Texas Instruments hired him and in 1965 his Nobel Prize winning boss, Jack Kilby, presented him with the idea for a calculator. In three days, Jerry Merryman did the entire circuit design for the device that his boss desired to be "as small as this little book that I have in my hand." The three man team had enough work completed to file for a patent in 1967, and revised the final patent in 1974. Merryman said in a 2013 NPR interview, "Silly me, I thought we were just making a calculator, but we were creating an electronic revolution." Mr. Merryman died Feb. 27 at a Dallas hospital from heart and kidney failure after experiencing complications during surgery to install a pacemaker. He was 86. The team's prototype is enshrined at the Smithsonian Institution. This 1997 photo shows Jack Kilby and Jerry Merryman, right, at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana.

"I have a Ph.D. in material science and I've known hundreds of scientists, professors, Nobel prize-winners and so on. Jerry Merryman was the most brilliant man that I've ever met. Period. Absolutely, outstandingly brilliant," said Vernon Porter, a former TI colleague and friend. "He had an incredible memory and he had an ability to pull up formulas, information, on almost any subject."
 
I actually met Mr. Merryman, he used to come to our campus all the time.

I also feel compelled to ask, "Bozeman, Montana actually has a computer museum?"
 
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Well that's a tragic way to end a fabulous life. But it sure sounds like he got a lot done! Damn!
 
I actually met Mr. Merryman, he used to come to our campus all the time.

I also feel compelled to ask, "Bozeman, Montana actually has a computer museum?"

Yes and a planetarium and dino bones etc...I went to MSU. Called museum of the Rockies.
 
Yes and a planetarium and dino bones etc...I went to MSU. Called museum of the Rockies.

Seperate museums dude. This is the "American Computer & Robotics Museum." It's at 11th and Kagy, not at Wilson and Kagy (Museum of the Rockies).
 
Seperate museums dude. This is the "American Computer & Robotics Museum." It's at 11th and Kagy, not at Wilson and Kagy (Museum of the Rockies).

Oh snap you're right ha I totally forgot.

I moved down south to be with my ailing grandfather right now. When he passes I'll head back to the valley.
 
Well that sucks. I lived two hours away from Bozeman for 23 years and saw the museum of the rockies. If I knew they had a computer museum I would've been all over that. Didn't even know it existed. :/
 
Thanks Cagey for sharing an amazing story about someone who was obviously so important to our digital age.


Rest in peace dear sir and thank you.
 
RIP.

Was a pretty fun project building an ALU - pretty amazing that it really is a pretty base part of a CPU.

I have a Monroe Calculating Machine currently in my office too - of course, not handheld as its like a small typewriter - but the fact that you can program it? pretty cool for that kinda tech that's around 50 years old.
 
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