Det virtuelle datamuseum / Regnecentralen / Eloge: Niels Ivar Bech
From: Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 6, Number 4, October 1984
Eloge: Niels Ivar Bech, 1920-1975
ISAAC L. AUERBACH
Niels Ivar Bech was one of Europe's most creative
leaders in the field of electronic digital computers. He
originated Danish computer development under the
auspices of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences
and was first managing director of its subsidiary,
Regnecentralen, which was Denmark's (and one of
Europe's) first independent designer and builder of
electronic computers.
Bech was born in 1920 in Lemvig, a small town in
the northwestern corner of Jutland, Denmark; his
schooling ended with his graduation from Gentofte
High School (Statsskole) in 1940. Because he had no
further formal education, he was not held in as high
esteem as he deserved by some less gifted people who
had degrees or were university professors.
During the war years, Bech was a teacher. When
Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, he became a
runner for the distribution of illegal underground
newspapers, and on occasion served on the crews of
the small boats that perilously smuggled Danish Jews
across the Kattegat to Sweden. After the war, from
1949 to 1957, he worked as a calculator in the Actuarial
Department of the Copenhagen Telephone Company
(Københavns Telefon Aktieselskab, KTAS).
The Danish Academy of Technical Sciences established a committee on electronic computing in 1947,
and in 1952 the academy obtained free access to the
complete design of the computer BESK (Binar Electronisk Sekevens Kalkylator) being built in Stockholm by the Swedish Mathematical Center (Matematikmaskinnamndens Arbetsgrupp). In 1953 the
Danish academy founded a nonprofit computer subsidiary, Regnecentralen.
Bech was assigned by KTAS to the project and assisted in building DASK (DAnsk BESK), a slightly modified copy of BESK, in a concentrated effort by a
devoted group of people who assembled the parts by
hand. In 1957 DASK became operational, and Bech
was named managing director of Regnecentralen,
serving in that capacity until 1971.
During these 14 years, the most productive phase of
his life, Bech was the senior Dane in computers-the
spokesman for both Regnecentralen and the Academy
of Technical Sciences. He was the leader of everything
that Regnecentralen did, in hardware and software.
For example, he guided some students from the DASK
coding courses, which were started in 1955, to develop
a library of subroutines, thus laying the foundation
for later software projects at Regnecentralen.
Immediately after the completion of DASK in 1959,
Regnecentralen developed a prototype of GIER and by
the end of 1962 had produced 18 GIER computers.
Bech made substantial efforts to strengthen and formalize Regnecentralen's connections with Danish universities. He tried to make permanent collaboration
contracts, including a provision that Regnecentralen
would establish computing centers at Danish universities. He convinced the government to acquire and
install a GIER in every major university in the country,
thus creating a network of university computers.
Bech recognized the value of longstanding Danish
contacts with the East and saw that the antipathy
between the United States and the nations of Eastern
Europe offered Regnecentralen some unique commercial opportunities. In 1964 he sold an early GIER to
the University of Warsaw. Shortly thereafter, Regnecentralen's equipment and know-how were introduced
into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and later
into Rumania, the Democratic German Republic, and
Yugoslavia.
Beginning in 1960 Bech worked for 10 years on his
concept of merging the computer manufacturers in
Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The attempts were unsuccessful, but were characteristic of
Bech's drive and vision.
Bech was one of the prime movers and financial
supporters in the 1960 establishment of a Nordic
scientific journal devoted to computer science, BIT.
The first issue was published in 1961, and BIT is now
an internationally respected journal in the fields of
numerical analysis and programming.
Regnecentralen's concern with ALGOL 60 started
with a European ALGOL conference in February 1959.
Regnecentralen then distributed a series of informal
discussion letters, the "ALGOL Bulletins." In March
1960 Regnecentralen published the international effort to define ALGOL-Peter Naur's "Report on the
Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60." An ALGOL 60 compiler for DASK was completed in September 1961.
Bech's enthusiasm for ALGOL triggered Christian Andersen to write a 1961 text on the language, Algol for
School and Home. (The English-language version is
titled Everyman's Desk ALGOL.) The portable ALGOL
compiler for GIER was ready in August 1962; it
prompted a revised version of the text in the next
year. In a later version, the language is treated as a
tool for describing problems of administrative data
processing.
One of the early developments of Regnecentralen
under Bech's direction was a high-speed paper-tape
reader, the RC2000, which read at the then-unbeliev able rate of 2000 characters per second. Although the
tape reader challenged Regnecentralen with a number
of unfamiliar mechanical problems, for many years it
had the reputation of being the most reliable commercial high-speed paper-tape reader on the market.
Bech had the foresight to train his countrymen in
computer technology, and he implemented it better
than almost anyone else of whom I am aware. He
recognized that the Danes had started considerably
behind other countries in the development of computers, and so, starting in the late 1950s, he arranged
each year to send up to a half-dozen of his prize
employees or brilliant young university faculty members to work in different countries, universities, and
companies for at least one year, folly supported by
Regnecentralen. This cadre of trained people then
returned either to Regnecentralen or to Danish universities to advance and teach the state of the art in
computer development. By 1970 "Bech's boys" occupied senior positions in nearly every university or
college in Denmark and were the principal executives
in Regnecentralen. They, in their turn, have been
responsible for training many more computer people
in Denmark. Bech's brilliant vision was magnificently
executed, and his country was made richer.
Bech was one of the original members of the 1959
General Assembly of the International Federation for
Information Processing (IFIP). He was of invaluable
assistance during the most formative period of IFIP's
gestation (he suggested the three-year cycle of IFIP
conferences), and he continued to serve IFIP with
boundless energy for over a decade. He was the Danish
representative from 1960 to 1970, a trustee from 1965
to 1970, and an individual member until 1973. He was
program chairman for IFIP Congress 62 (the second
World Computer Conference) in Munich and in that
year was the founding chairman of IFIP TC3 on
Education. (He resigned from TC3 upon realizing that
he would not receive adequate national and financial
support.) He was a member of the Future Policy
Committee from 1967 to 1970, and in 1968 was chairman of the International Liaison Committee and a
member in 1970 and 1971.
Bech was an advisor to UNESCO and was involved
in the evolution of the International Computation
Center in Rome. He was one of the founders of IFIP's
Special Interest Group on Administrative Data Processing (IAG). He was one of the first Europeans to
identify the need for computer education and training
within the European business user community. As a
result, he spearheaded the many seminars given on
the use of computers and their application to business.
Bech supported the Nordic computer conferences,
NordSAM and NordDATA, that have been held annually since 1959. As the number of participants increased from 270 to well over 1000, the main interest
shifted from numerical analysis to business data processing.
The computer courses and computing centers supported by Regnecentralen had a major influence on
Danish computing. The university contracts Bech suggested were opposed by Datacentralen, the semipublic
computation center established in 1959. This caused
a major crisis at Regnecentralen, which was reorganized as a corporation in 1964. The nonprofit undertaking was converted into a profitable one.
By the late 1960s, Regnecentralen had grown into a
full-fledged Danish computer company, designing and
manufacturing hardware, developing software, creating logic for new computers, and operating a public
computing service bureau. By U.S. standards it was
tiny, in 1970 having only a 150-person production
department. Internal and external politics-and competition from private companies within Denmark as
well as foreign computer companies-made it difficult
for Regnecentralen to compete successfully. Bech took
hold of these problems, but time was against him.
Regnecentralen was underrated and undermined, and
its concept was destroyed. An associate of Bech's
suggests that in this difficult period there was a lack
of constructive collaboration with Bech on the part of
the members of the board of the company. In 1971
Bech was dismissed-a blow from which he never
recovered, having lost the most meaningful part of his
life. (In 1979, eight years after Bech left, Regnecentralen went bankrupt.)
The last half-dozen years of Bech's life were spent
in extreme frustration, disappointment, and illness.
The man who was prepared to go to any measure to
help his co-workers was incapable of accepting help
from others. He remained alone, shaken and burned
out, seriously ill. Hospital stays helped only temporarily. In his last winter, he suffered a thrombosis; by
spring he had recovered enough to take on work at a
firm founded by his former colleagues (Advanced Data
Processing Consultants A/S), but this didn't last long.
On July 25,1975, he was found slumped over his desk,
the victim of a heart attack. He is survived by a son,
Mikael Bech, and a daughter, Mette Bro.
Bech was, by any standard, a giant. Virtually singlehandedly, he created the Danish computer industry
and trained almost all of the practitioners who today
are at the managerial level or hold influential government jobs. He was an outstanding teacher, manager,
and communicator. He had a wide conceptual horizon
but was singularly focused on his work. He worked
quietly, persistently, and unobtrusively.
Bech believed in great flexibility; he had the knack
of being able to reformulate a problem to make it
easier to solve. He never believed in a formal organizational structure; he was a master of managing by
wandering about, thereby creating his own invisible
pattern beneath the structure to accomplish his goals
and objectives. He was always first to give someone
else credit for the accomplishments of Regnecentralen. In some ways he was overly generous in giving
credit to others for work he had done. He was far too
trusting. His friends and colleagues knew him as a
warm, sensitive, apolitical, imaginative, and brilliant
supermensch-a tower of strength and source of sound
advice to all who were fortunate enough to know him.
He was a thoughtful, generous man of indisputable
integrity.
I knew Bech for over 15 years. With his death I lost
a valued friend, our profession lost a dynamic contributor, and the industry lost a creative entrepreneur.
Bech would have been pleased to know that after
his death his countrymen regarded him so highly that
they created a unique memorial volume in his memory
(Niels Ivar Bech-en epoke i edb-udviklingen i Danmark, edited by Poul Sveistrup, Peter Naur, H. B.
Hansen, and C. Gram, Copenhagen, DATA, 1976, 144
pp.). The volume consists of a number of articles
written by those who knew Bech and collaborated in
his computing activities. I have excerpted much of this
eloge from those articles as a last act of friendship and
a final tribute. Reviewers of my first draft have contributed additional material. The record of Bech's
accomplishments and the memories of his friends and
colleagues are a legacy of great significance.
Isaac L Auerbach's career includes employment with
the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, the
Burroughs Corporation, and the Auerbach
corporations. He was the founder and first president
of the International Federation for Information
Processing (IFIP).
® 1984 by the American Federation of Information Processing
Societies, Inc. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this
material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the AFIPS copyright notice
and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is
given that the copying is by permission of the American Federation
of Information Processing Societies, Inc. To copy otherwise, or to
republish, requires specific permission.
Author's Address: Auerbach Publishers Inc., 6560 North Park Drive,
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Road, Narberth, PA 19072.
Categories and Subject Descriptors: A.O [General]- biographies,
N. I. Bech; K.2 [History of Computing]- N. I. Bech, hardware,
people, software. General Terms: Human Factors. Additional Key
Words and Phrases: BESK, DASK, GIER, Regnecentralen (Denmark).
© 1984 AFIPS 0164-1239/040332-334$01.00/00
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