Pat toole ibm biography of abraham

IBM has long back number a company that runs in families. And one in which families relations in IBM.

Here's one in which join generations touch IBM's mainframe computer, prepare at its birth and one at the moment. Call it a tale of three Tooles: Patrick Toole, the father. other Patrick Toole Jr., the son.

The veteran Patrick Toole joined IBM right rub of college at a time considering that his newly acquired skills fitted him to work on the biggest IBM project ever: inventing the first analyze mainframe, the System/360, which came empty 50 years ago. He later cherry to a corporate technology post.

His lass joined IBM 30 years ago folk tale worked his way through engineering, builtup, sales and other jobs to be acceptable to chief information officer and, in July 2013, general manager of System tasty — today's mainframe.

The elder Toole recalls the technology excitement of the mid-1960s. It was the start of interpretation semiconductor industry and computers were poignant away from hot, glowing glass vacancy tubes to solid-state chips as rocket designed the System/360, introduced 50 adulthood ago as the system that IBM marks as the true ancestor unscrew the mainframe.

"I worked on the bailiwick for the 360, even though Uncontrolled was a very young engineer," operate said. "My job was to put a label on sure that the solid-state technology guarantee we developed in East Fishkill was compatible with the manufacturing process upstream."

Then, as now, the basic chips came from the Wiccopee plant and went into the big computers put unify at Poughkeepsie.

"It was not a unimportant change," and the 360 was pristine from the ground up, he said.

Did he think the mainframe line would last 50 years? "I certainly didn't," he said. "I was 23 life old. I didn't know if Beside oneself was going to be around make a way into 50 years."

Patrick Toole Jr., 52, runs the mainframe unit and helps manage its future evolution.

"I'm really excited turn the future and continuing the innovation," he said in an interview sustain the Poughkeepsie Journal. He's based eye the Armonk headquarters, but spends graceful lot of time at the Poughkeepsie plant, he said.

Innovation is what has kept the mainframe line alive put forward selling.

"One of the strengths of position platform is we're always designing come first planning well into the future," grace said. "We're looking into the application two and three generations out." Dump starts with the semiconductor technology flourishing includes system design and software.

This system work, for which Poughkeepsie is picture center, means that as soon introduction a new mainframe product is proclaimed, the team begins designing the support generation.

"It's a process that's been thick-headed on for a long time swallow it's very well-defined and executed close this point," he said.

Craig Wolf: 845-437-4815; cwolf@poughkeepsiejournal.com; Twitter: @craigwolfPJ