Keith, Ronald James (1924 - 1975)

Summary

Ron Keith worked for the Weapons Research Establishment. During the 1950s he was involved in designing a special machine to predict impact positions of missiles while in flight. The design of this machine, the ATROPOS (or DIP), was a transistorised version of the TREAC, provided with a special built-in square root operation which was needed to achieve the very high execution speed to predict at a rate of 5 times per second.

Details

Chronology

1947

Career event - Student Member (StudIEAust), Institution of Engineers Australia

c. 1950 -

Career position - CSIRO Mathematical Instruments Section

c. 1953

Education - Bachelor of Engineering (BE), University of Sydney?

c. 1955 -

Career event - Engineer, Weapons Research Establishment, South Australia

1957

Career event - Visited the United Kingdom, when Trevor Pearcey was at the Radar Research Establishment on TREAC

1975

Buried - Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium

Published resources

Journal Articles

• Blunden, W. R.; Keith, R. J.; Speedy, C. B., 'The application of electronic techniques to high speed computers', Journal of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, 25 (1-2) (1953), 11-18. Details

Resources

• 'Keith, Ron J.', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1477069. Details

Resource Sections

• Australian Computer Society, 'Chapter 9 : Australian made, Australian designed', in ACS Heritage Project, 2015, https://50years.acs.org.au/heritage-projects/acs-heritage-project--chapter-9.html. Details

See also

• Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Technology in Australia 1788-1988, Online edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, 3 May 2000, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/index_k.html. Details