Professor Morris Rubinoff

A Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in computer technology. In addition to teaching at Penn for 34 years, he was an inventor who held several patents involving computer technology. In the 1950s, he helped design and develop the first simulated-flight trainer. At a computer conference in New Mexico in 1957, he said that he was confident that computers could one day bring world peace. "The ultimate goal of this machine," he said, "might be to isolate the factors which produce aggressive tendencies in a personality." He hoped that the factors could then be modified. A native of Toronto, he earned Bachelor's and Master's Degrees and a Doctorate in Physics from the University of Toronto. In 1946, he became an instructor in Physics at Harvard University and studied Applied Science in the school's computation laboratory. For two years, he assisted in the design of an electronic digital computer at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton before beginning his career at Penn in 1950. He was a consultant for the computer division of Philco. In 1957, the company asked him to interrupt his teaching duties to travel to Europe and Israel to speak to schools and companies about advances in computer technology. He agreed, on the condition that he could take his family. He was a member of several professional organizations.