Charles A. Phillips began working with computers at the Treasury, and later at the State Department after World War II. In the 1950s, he transferred to the Defense Department where he became a data systems languages expert. Phillips left government service in 1962 to become the first leader of the Data Processing Group of the Business Equipment Manufacturers Association from 1962 to 1972. In 1972 he joined the accounting firm of Lybrand, Ross Borthers, and Montgomery as director of management consulting services. In 1976 he returned to the Computer and Business Equipment Association as a consultant to write a history of the computer industry.
Phillips was active in the standardization of the computing industry, especially programming languages. He was the first chairman of the executive committee of the Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL), which initiated the development of COBOL.
The collection contains minutes, publications, speeches, proceedings, correspondence and photographs related to Charles Phillips work in standardization with CODASYL and the American National Standards Institute's X.3 Committee (Computers and Information Processing) which Phillips chaired, and his employment at the Business Equipment Manufacturers Association. The majority of the collection reflects Phillips' interest in COBOL standards including a collection of articles, presentations, and reports on COBOL development that Phillips assembled.
The materials in this collection are arranged into the following groups:
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.
The records were given to the Charles Babbage Institute by the Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association in 1986.
Access to the collection is unrestricted.
CBI holds the copyright to all materials in the collection, except for items covered by a prior copyright (such as published materials). Researchers may quote from the collection under the fair use provisions of the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).
Charles A. Phillips Papers (CBI 39), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.
This series contains minutes, reports, manuals and memoranda related to Phillips' work with the X.3 Committee.
This series includes speeches given by Phillips, reports and manuals.
SEE ALSO: Presentations, 1962-1972.
This series contains reports, correspondence, and articles which
Phillips collected including a speech by Phillips at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology on COBOL and Jean E. Sammet's
This series contains minutes and documents from the COBOL and Executive Committee, miscellaneous reports, and documents from the twentieth anniversary meeting of the organization.
This series contains information on several professional meetings on computers in which Phillips participated.
These items are photographs of Phillips and some of his colleagues, most of which are undated and mostly unidentified.
SEE ALSO: Speeches file in Business Equipment Manufacturers Association