Napier, MSCNewsWire, 16 June 2016 - New Zealand’s presence as a focal nation in information technology development in the 1970s has been obscured in the mists of time. One of the visitors in this era was Herb Grosch and the insights he gave during his visit hold water to this day.

He was already a pivotal figure in computer development through his Grosch’s Law which holds that to do a calculation 10 times as cheaply you must do it 10 times faster.

Herb Grosch, writes MSC’s Peter Isaac, was one of the few people anywhere who had encountered Leslie John Comrie the Papakura-born inventor of the computer bureau and thus of computer services, currently among the world’s top four industries.

Mr Grosch who knew the founding Watsons of IBM had been seconded by IBM to the Manhattan Project.

In New Zealand Dr Grosch was quite definite on the point that data processing would remain in quantum mechanics. There would and indeed could be no by-passing of the binary method. There could only be the speeding up of this giving the impression that a computer was behaving like a human brain.

This one has stood the test of time.

He stated that the United States would emerge unchallenged in information technology leadership. This he stated was because of the collegiate approach to development in the United States in which “everyone talked to everyone.”

This contrasted with the regimented Japanese approach which could not accommodate the necessary degree of creativity.

This one too has stood the test of time.

I asked him about the nature of people who were good at computing.

“People who are interested in science fiction, will also be interested in and good at computing.”

How true.

Other high priests of IT who toured New Zealand at this time were Dr Daniel Cougar, the force behind FORTRAN and most famously the co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak a familiar figure in the Hutt Valley, home at that time of pioneering work in screen presentation that was unacknowledged then and remains unrecognised now.

Herb Grosch died six years ago. His straightforward predictions delivered in plain language is a reminder that great scientists like great industrialists make simple the most complex of issues.

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