Bernard Marshall Gordon (born 1927 in Springfield, Massachusetts) is an American engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is considered "the father of high-speed analog-to-digital conversion". Early life, education, and career At an early age Gordon developed an interest in electronics. Upon graduation from Springfield's Technical High School, he enlisted in the US Navy and later became a commissioned officer. He earned BS and MA degrees in Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology via the V-12 program and the GI Bill. In 1947, Gordon began his technical career at Philco Corporation and later joined the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, where he was responsible for the development of the standard circuits, acoustic memory, supervisory control, and input/output circuits of the first commercial computer, UNIVAC I. He subsequently worked at the Laboratory for Electronics (LFE), a spinoff of the wartime Radiation Laboratory at MIT. While there, Gordon helped create the first current switching digital-to-analog converter in 1951 as part of the first digital pulse position indicators for radar. A/D conversion From the late 1930s into the early 1950s, digital signal processing was an attractive idea. However, progress was limited and then state-of-the-art systems were slow, offering limited precision, and were only a modest improvement over purely manual methods. In 1953, Gordon and Joseph H. Davis co-founded EPSCO, Inc. to manufacture a variety of electronic components and subassemblies. While at EPSCO, in 1953–54, Gordon created high-precision and high-speed signal processing, including the core technologies of analog-to-digital conversion. These developments were fundamental to the subsequent medical diagnostic tools, and have influenced therapeutic practice as well. Gordon publicized these developments in his paper, "A high-speed AD converter and its possible applications", delivered to the 1955 conference of the Instrument Society of America. Building on this work, Gordon and his engineering teams developed the first solid-state x-ray generator, the first quadrature-base band phased-array ultrasound system, and the first instant imaging computer-aided tomography system, among many other related inventions. These developments enabled subsequent advances in fields as diverse as aerospace telemetry, industrial control, communications, and many modern consumer products which rely on the digitization of analog measurement, audio, video, and optical inputs. EPSCO grew rapidly for several years. Gordon later left the company and in 1963, founded Gordon Engineering. In 1967, Gordon Engineering became Analogic Corporation and at various times Gordon served as chairman of the board of directors, president, executive chairman, and chief executive officer. While