Richard Milton Bloch

Co-designer and programmer of the Mark 1, the first automatic digital computer, and inventor of the parity check procedure for automatic error detection used in almost all computers today, Bloch also served as Chief Operations Officer at Harvard University's Computation Laboratory in the 1940s.

Born in Rochester, N.Y., he was a 1943 honors graduate of Harvard University in Mathematics, Physics and Economics. Bloch served as a lieutenant in the Navy in World War II, then returned to Harvard as a Research Associate in the university's Engineering Division.

Over the succeeding years, he held a number of administrative positions in the rapidly growing computer industry, including General Manager of the Computer Division of Raytheon, Vice President for Technical Operations at Honeywell, Vice President for Corporate Development at the Auerbach Corporation, and Vice President of the Advanced Systems Division of General Electric.

When G.E. left the computer field, Bloch moved into private work in venture capital, acquisition-divestiture, and high-level corporate consulting in the computer industry. He became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Artificial Intelligence Corporation, a company developing a product to use natural English to query databases.