Interviewed by Ron Dennison, on February 29, 2024 in San Jose, California,
© Computer History Museum
In this oral history Richard Oswald recalled his outstanding career. He began his techincal contributions to IBM products with the 3340, which introduced one of Al Shugart’s most significant events in mass storage, the low-cost, low-mass, lightly-loaded, or Winchester head. His career at IBM went on to include contributions to the system design and electronics for the 3350, 3370, and 3375.
After leaving IBM, Dick became a well-respected consultant to the hard drive industry, solving problems and creating new technology at most of the major hard drive and peripheral companies including Control Data, Data General, Hitachi, HP, Matsushita (Panasonic in the U.S), Maxtor, Memorex, NEC, Nixsdorf, Quantum, Seagate, Siemens, Syquest, and Toshiba.
Subsequently, his career embraced both teaching and work as an expert witness. One of his final engagements was here at the Computer History Museum as a member of the RAMAC team that restored to operation one of the last surviving examples of the world’s first hard disk drive.
- Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102808975
Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum’s Oral Histories Collection.
Catalog number: 102808976
Lot number: 2024.0027
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