Benjamin Durfee

Benjamin Durfee (1897 to 1980) was an IBM engineer who collaborated with colleagues Clair Lake and Francis Hamilton to transform Harvard physicist Howard Aiken's theoretical concept into the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, known as the Harvard Mark I. He designed key elements of the calculator's circuitry, including components that unified its operations and implemented Aiken's computational principles, and he played a central role in testing the machine at IBM's Endicott facility in 1943 and afterward at Harvard, where it was unveiled in 1944. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.