James Harold Brown, 74, Westport Island, passed away on April 3 at Indiana University Health Bloomington.
He was born Dec. 2, 1936 at Beech Grove, Ind. to the late Harold James Brown and Marie (Harbor) Carman.
Jim was a retired computer programmer and received his B.S. Degree from MIT in 1959.
Jim worked all his life in the computer industry as a programmer, first at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, helping to compute the first trajectories for rockets to the moon in 1959. Later he was at Raytheon in Massachusetts, then for several years at Control Data in Palo Alto, Cal. Most of his professional life was in the Bay area of California.
He was one of the earliest programmers at a start-up company Four Phase Systems, Inc., and his designs were instrumental in the success of that company, which later was acquired by Motorola. When Motorola left the computer industry in California, Jim and two colleagues founded their own software company, Lifetime Software Inc. in San Jose. He loved programming and was a master “debugger.”
Jim always took particular joy in his family. He also loved the sea, as a sailor when a boy, and on countless ocean excursions by cruise ship with his wife–to all the continents of the world except Asia and Africa. In retirement he was able to do all the fun things on his computer that are available today and took great pride in the entire computer industry, its benefits to society, and in his own contributions to it.
He was an active member of the First Congregational Church in Wiscasset, where he managed the church website and had many friendships.
He was also preceded in death by his stepmother, May I. (Teifke) Brown.
Survivors include his wife, Dorothy S. (Swanton) Brown; daughters, Jennifer Swanton Brown and husband Robert Ziegler of Cupertino, Cal. and Alice May Brown of Bloomington, Ind.; son, Nathaniel J. S. Brown and wife Eve J. Brown of Bloomington, Ind.; brother, Robert A. Brown of Mattapoisett, Mass.; and grandchildren, Stella and Jackson Ziegler, and Trevor and Graham Brown.
A memorial service will be at a later date.
Contributions may be made to the First Congregational Church of Wiscasset, PO Box 350, Wiscasset, ME 04578.
