Bob Bemer

Name: Bob Bemer
Born: February 8, 1920, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, USA
Died: June 22, 2004 (age 84)

Computer related contributions

• Known as the father of ASCII, Bob Bemer helped develop the ASCII character code set and introduced several new characters including the ESCape character, backslash, and the curly bracket.
• Invented the ESCape sequence.
• Helped create COBOL and also coined the words COBOL and CODASYL.
• Helped create the 8-bits per byte standard.
• Published world's first warning on Year 2000 problem in 1971.

Honors and awards

Received the IEEE Computer Society's "Computer Pioneer" Award in 2003