Gordon D. Goldstein received a degree in electrical engineering from Clarkston College of Technology at Potsdam, New York. In 1941 he began work as a civilian inspector of radio and navigation equipment with the Army Signal Corps. During the mid 1940's to 1950 he was a development engineer with the Washington Institute of Technology. From 1950 to 1951 he was chief engineer with computers for the Census Bureau in Philadelphia. In 1951 he joined the Navy Department, working first as an electronics scientist with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, then in research and development at the David Taylor Model Basin's applied mathematics laboratory, and finally, in 1956, with the ONR Information Systems Branch until his retirement in 1980. He was involved with applications of the Univac I, including a Russian translation project.
Goldstein was editor of ONR's Digital Computer newsletter, and a member of the Interagency Group for Research and Information Systems (IGRIS). He was a frequent seminar speaker and participant, especially in the fields of linguistics and machine translation.
Goldstein was also active in professional societies. He was a treasurer of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS), and very involved in the Spring Joint Computer Conferences (SJCC), acting as chairman of the proceedings committee for SJCC '64, and secretary of the SJCC '71 steering committee. He was a member of the public information committee of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies (IFIP), a member of the IFIP organizing committee in 1963, and part time congress committee member for IFIP Congress '65.
The collection consists of subject files containing reports, memoranda, electronic mail print outs, and notes created by Goldstein as an electronics engineer and research administrator at the Office of Naval Research. Some of the material appears to have been gathered in his role as editor of the Digital Computing Newsletter. Topics include: Spring Joint Computer Conferences of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies, the International Federation for Information Processing Congress 65, David W. Taylor Model Basin Applied Mathematics Laboratory, ARPANET (electronic mail) correspondence and program documentation, European computing, computer-assisted language translation, and the UNIVAC computer.
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 Gordon D. Goldstein in 1987.
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).
Gordon D. Goldstein Papers (CBI 68), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.
This series consists of copies of computer printouts from ARPANET, including several sets of program documentation.
sent 1974-1976
sent 1976
sent 1976-1977
This series includes notes and minutes from the Spring Joint Computer Conference (SJCC) steering committees of 1964, 1965, and 1971; correspondence, minutes, and notes relating to Goldstein's attendance at IFIP '65 organizing meetings; and materials from the Xth International Conference of Linguistics, 1966-1967.
This series includes reports: on training given to S. N. Alexander, at the National Bureau of Standards; on Univac; and on early European computing. It also includes a progress report which covers the history of the Navy's Engineering and Development Division of the Applied Mathematics Laboratory at David Taylor Model Basin and its work with Univac I.