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Father of RAM : Jay Wright Forrester


Random Access Memory (RAM) was developed by Jay Wright Forrester around 1949. Born in 1918, in Nebraska, Forrester grew up on a cattle ranch. The cattle ranch had no electricity and is believed to have spurred his interest towards electricity. In high school, a young Forrester assembled a 12-volt electrical system from old car parts, which effectively gave the ranch its first electrical power. This was a wind driven system.

Forrester later attended the University of Nebraska and then graduated from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined as a research assistant at MIT's high voltage laboratory. After working and pioneering feedback control systems at MIT, he went on to develop the RAM as we know today. We all know the importance of the Random Access Memory, popularly called RAM. Contrary to magnetic media such as hard disk drives, there are no movable parts in the RAM. As a result, this piece of technology significantly boosts up computing speed by reducing the access time required for data read / write cycles. Forrester still serves at the MIT Sloan School of Management.