Bemer, Robert William

▪ 2005

      American computer programmer (b. Feb. 8, 1920, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.—d. June 22, 2004, Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas), was instrumental in helping to develop ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), a system that, upon becoming operational in 1963, greatly facilitated the exchange of data between various makes of computers. Bemer's contribution—as part of the committee that set the standard—was centred on the formation of an “escape sequence” in character codes that would permit the information system to break out of one alphabet and enter another; as a result, extra-ASCII alphabets were created for Greek, Arabic, and languages using the Cyrillic script, among numerous others. In addition, his escape system served as the basis for such technologies as cursor movement, laser printers, video games, and computer-generated films. Bemer was working for IBM when he served on the committee that adopted ASCII. He also served as an adviser in the development in 1959 of another computer programming language—COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), a standard desired by the U.S. government—and was credited with implementing the FORTRANSIT programming system. Besides working for IBM (1955–62), Bemer was employed by Sperry Rand (1962–65), General Electric (1965–70), and Honeywell Information Systems (1970–82) before forming his own software company, for which he served as president from 1982 until his death.

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