Wallace John Eckert - Watson Laboratory

Watson Laboratory

After the war Eckert moved back to Columbia. Watson had just had a falling out with Harvard University over a project IBM had funded. IBM would instead focus their funding on Columbia, and Eckert's laboratory was named Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory. Eckert understood the significance of his laboratory, keenly aware of the advantage of scientific calculations performed without human interventions for long stretches of computation. A massive machine built to Eckert's specifications was built and installed behind glass at IBM's headquarters on Madison Avenue in January 1948. Known as the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator, it was used as a caculating device with some success, but served even better as a recruiting tool. Eckert publisher a description of the SSEC in November 1948.

As an employee of IBM, Eckert directed one of the first industrial research laboratories in the country. In 1945 he hired Herb Grosch and Llewellyn Thomas as the next two IBM research scientists, who both made significant contributions. When Cuthbert Hurd became the next PhD to be hired by IBM in 1949, he was offered a position with Eckert, but instead founded the Applied Science Department, and later directed the development of IBM's first commercial stored program computer (the IBM 701) based on the demand demonstrated by applications such as those of Eckert.

In 1957 the Watson lab moved to Yorktown Heights, New York (with a new building completed in 1961) where it is known as the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Eckert won the James Craig Watson Medal in 1966 from the US National Academy of Sciences.

He attended the launch of Apollo 14 just before his death August 24, 1971 in New Jersey. Dr. Wallace Eckert Dies at 69; Tracked Moon with Computer |newspaper= New York Times |date= August 25, 1971 |author= William M. Freeman |url= http://www.columbia.edu//cu/computinghistory/eckert-obit.html |accessdate= June 4, 2010 }}