Japanese Computer Pioneers

Miura TakeoMiura Takeo
1926〜2012

Miura Takeo was born on October 1, 1926. He joined Hitachi, Ltd in 1946 after graduating from the electrical engineering in Kyoto university. He assigned to Central Research Laboratory in Hitachi in 1947, and started research for analog computers and automatic control systems. In 1953, he developed the highest speed analog computer which could solve the 14th order non-linear differential equations, and applied to systems simulation for designing automatic control systems. In 1955, Hitachi delivered the analog computer to the Defense Agency of Japan as a flight simulator. As the analog computer was improved higher, it was widely applied to large systems simulation, such as the flight simulator of National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan, which was one of the largest fight simulators in the world.

In 1958, Miura Takeo started research for a hybrid computer, which utilized high speed of analog computers and high data processing capability of digital computers. He realized the hybrid computer with HIPAC 101 of Hitachi for the practical use of scientific computation. In 1962, he developed the epoch-making large hybrid computer for an electric power economic load dispatching system with Kansai Electric Power Co. Hybrid computer systems had been a major computer systems in large data centers in Japan until super-computers were generally introduced.

Miura Takeo also contributed for developing a control computer for the industrial control system. The needs to try to use computer systems for heavy industry field had risen in 1960's. In those days, business computers involved many problems such as high reliability or real-time responsibility under severe environments. HITAC 7250, which he developed as one of the control computer series of Hitachi, was able to dissolve these problems. This development had big contribution to widely apply computers to the industry field.

In the later of 1980's, he led Hitachi as a vice-president. He also occupied the chairman of policy and computer section of JEIDA, the Japanese representative of many international conferences, and the president of IPSJ.Then he showed many other contribution in business and academic field, especially international standardization and corroboration. He was the Japanese representative of IFIP till recently. As the vice-chairman of IFIP, he contributed to growth of information processing technology in and outside the country.


(As of Aug. 29, 2003)

Miura died on February 21, 2012.