John Diebold, R.I.P.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

John Diebold (pronounced DEE-bold), a visionary whose promotion of computers as business tools in the 1950s resulted in his firing, passed away Monday at his home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. at the age of 79. The cause was said to be esophageal cancer.

After graduating from the Harvard Business School in 1951, he was hired by a New York management consulting firm and was fired three times for insisting that clients consider computerizing.

“I was too early,” he once said. “It was before the first computer was installed for business use.”

Diebold laid out his vision of a computerized future with his 1952 book, “Automation,” which presented the then-radical notion of using programmable devices in daily business.

His vision of the future was conceived while serving in the Merchant Marine during World War II. He watched the ship’s anti-aircraft fire control system, with its crude self-correcting mechanisms, and envisioned adapting the technology for business use. Source: AP via Yahoo! News

Diebold was a perfect example of a visionary, as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Online: having or marked by foresight and imagination.

Through books, speeches and his international consulting firm, Mr. Diebold persuaded major corporations to automate their assembly lines, store their records electronically and install interoffice computer networks.

In 1968, 10 years before interstate ATM networks, he advised several Chase Manhattan Bank executives of the costs and benefits of a national system for electronic funds transfer.

He envisioned a utopia built on technological progress, complete with cars that diagnose their own problems and refrigerators that know to order groceries. Source: The New York Times

We Say: Although obviously not as well known to most of our readers as say, Steve Jobs, we owe much to John Diebold. His ideas about computerization were so far ahead, they seemed to vanish, only to appear and be implemented later. For example, in 1963, Diebold presented newspaper executives with a plan to use keyboards for entering stories that could be edited on computer consoles. Of course, we know this is in common use today.

Diebold is survived by his wife, Vanessa; a daughter Emma, of Bedford Hills; a daughter, Joan, of Quincy, Mass.; and a son, John, of Bedford Hills. He will be missed.