Frank Beck (computer scientist)
British computer scientist
Frank Beck (28 December 1930 – 3 February 2020) was a British computer scientist who pioneered the application of user-interface hardware including the touchscreen, the computer-controlled knob and the video wall while working at CERN during the 1970s.
Early life
He was born as Franz Beck in Vienna, Austria to Friedrich and Edith Beck, a Jewish couple who worked in a family-owned business. At the age of 8, shortly before the outbreak of World War II he escaped to London, England with his mother. His father stayed behind, escaping to France, where he survived for three years before being sent to Auschwitz and murdered. On arrival in England, Franz anglicized his name to Frank, and, like thousands of other children, was evacuated from London during hostilities.
After leaving school, he was conscripted into the Royal Air Force where he worked as a wireless mechanic, and learned about electronics. When his National Service ended he worked at the GEC research labs while studying mathematics at Chelsea Polytechnic (now King's College) and Birkbeck College. At this time he became interested in the emerging science of computer programming, and became a programmer on his employer's HEC computer, a commercially available machine. He then moved to the Central Electricity Generating Board where he did engineering calculations on their English Electric DEUCE computer. In 1958 he married Margaret Louise Hammel (1934–2003, known as Louise).
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Beck (computer scientist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.