Max Palevsky

Palevsky was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Jewish immigrant parents — Izchok (Isadore) Palevsky (born May 10, 1890, in Pinsk, in the Brest Region of the Russian Empire [now in Belarus], died September 27, 1969, in Los Angeles), and Sarah Greenblatt (born May 16, 1894, died December 28, 1949, in Chicago).

Izchok had arrived in Baltimore from Bremen, Germany, on the S.S. Brandenburg on March 18, 1910, while Sarah immigrated around 1916.

Palevsky's parents spoke Yiddish fluently, but little English.

His father, a house painter, did not have a car and had to use the Chicago streetcars to transport his equipment.

His older brother, Harry (September 16, 1919 — September 17, 1990), was a physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory; his sister, Helen (born 1920), married Melvin M. Futterman (December 28, 1918 – March 14, 1989).

Max Palevsky (July 24, 1924 – May 5, 2010) was an American art collector, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and computer technology pioneer.

He was known as a member of the Malibu Mafia – a group of wealthy American Jewish men who donated money to liberal and progressive causes and politicians.

The youngest of three children, Palevsky grew up at 1925½ Hancock Street in Chicago.

After graduating from public high school in Chicago, Palevsky volunteered for the US Army Air Corps as a weatherman during World War II and served from 1943 to 1946.

For his training he went for a year to the University of Chicago for basic science and mathematics and Yale University for electronics.

He was then sent to New Guinea, which was the Air Force's central base for electronics in the South Pacific.

After the war, the GI Bill made it financially feasible for Palevsky to earn a B.S. in mathematics and a B.Ph. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1948.

Palevsky also did graduate work in philosophy at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Chicago.

After attending and resigning from a doctorate program in philosophy at UCLA, where he had served as a teaching assistant in the philosophy department, Palevsky discovered computer technology through a lecture at Caltech by John von Neumann about the advent of computer technology.

Palevsky began working in the computer industry in 1950 for $100 a week building computers at Northrop Aircraft.

Between March 1950 and January 1951, he built copies of the MADIDDA, a special-purpose computer intended to solve differential equations.

The MADIDDA was designed by physicist Floyd Steele, who left Northrop in 1950, a year after the MADIDDA's completion.

Priced from $25,000 to $30,000, MADDIDA would prove to be the last and most sophisticated dedicated differential analyzer ever built once all attention soon turned to electronic computers.

Two years after Palevsky joined Northrop, the division was sold to Bendix Corporation.

Palevsky worked at Bendix from 1952 to 1956 designing digital differential analyzers as a project engineer, working on the logic design for the company's first computer.

In March 1956, Bendix offered their first digital computer, the Bendix G-15, described by some as the first personal computer (a claim that is widely disputed).

Palevsky worked on the DA-1 differential analyzer option, which connected to the G-15 and resulted in a machine similar to the MADDIDA, using the G-15 to re-wire the inputs to the analyzer instead of the custom drums and wiring of the earlier machine.

In March 1957, Palevsky went on to work at Packard Bell Corporation, at a new affiliate of the company that he started, called Packard Bell Computer Corp., in a storefront at 11766 W Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

He was vice president and director of the new division.

The new facility launched a research and development program in the digital computer field, with a staff of experienced engineers and skilled technicians to implement the new development.

Palevsky convinced the company that they should enter the computer business and helped develop the first silicon computer, which became the PB 250, which was modestly successful.

Palevsky gave many lectures during this period, including at the second international meeting on analog computation at Strasbourg, France, in September 1958.

Palevsky felt that ten percent of the market of small to medium size scientific and process control computers was being totally neglected.

He started looking for venture capital to start a company to address this market, and through contacts from the University of Chicago was able to raise $1 million from Arthur Rock and the Rosenwald family of the Sears Roebuck fortune.

In April 1960, Packard-Bell Computer Corp. and Bailey Meter Co. signed an agreement for the exclusive application of PB250's in the control of power plants.

He left Packard Bell with eleven associates from the computer division to found Scientific Data Systems of California in September 1961.

Within a year they introduced the SDS 910, which made the company profitable.

Initially, it targeted scientific and medical computing markets.

From 1962 to 1965, the company introduced seven computers, all of them commercial successes.

On March 15, 1966, they introduced the Sigma 7, the first of a family of machines that marked the full-scale entry of the company into new areas of business data processing, time sharing, and multiprocessing.

The Sigma 7 had business capabilities because the once-separate disciplines of business and scientific electronic data processing had developed to the point where one machine could handle both.

SDS captured a little more than two per cent of the overall digital computer market in 1966 and continued to grow with the market.

Palevsky sold SDS to Xerox in May 1969 for $920 million, with Arthur Rock's assistance, at which time he became a director and chairman of the Executive Committee of Xerox Corporation.

Palevsky's initial investment of $60,000 in SDS became nearly $100 million at the sale.

As vice president and general manager of Packard Bell Computer, Palevsky supervised the building of a new 20000 sqft building at 1935 Armacost Avenue to house the firm's expanding computer activities, for consolidation of computer and systems engineering and for needed expansion of systems as well as computer manufacturing facilities.