James Herbert Pomerene

Co-inventor and developer of the IAS machine and IBM 7030 and Harvest computers, Pomerene joined the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey under the leadership of John von Neumann in 1946. The project built a parallel stored program computer called the IAS machine that was the prototype for a number of machines such as the MANIAC I, ORACLE, and ILLIAC series. Pomerene designed and implemented the adder portion of the arithmetic unit.

Collaborating with engineers such as Bruce Gilchrist and Y.K. Wong, he invented a fast adder which incorporated a speed-up technique for asynchronous adders, reducing the time for additive carry-overs to propagate. This design was later incorporated in one commercial computer, the Philco TRANSAC S-2000, introduced in 1957—the first commercial transistorized computer.