Obituary for Eldon Conrad Hall
Eldon Conrad Hall, 98, of Naples, Florida, died on May 25, 2022. He was born in Payette, Idaho on June 15, 1923, to William Baker Hall and Elsie Nodle Hall.
Eldon’s early years were spent on his family’s farm on the banks of the Snake River in eastern Oregon. After the death of his father when Eldon was seven years old, the family moved back across the river to Payette, Idaho. There was less land, but Eldon’s interest in farming remained strong; however, he was also interested in education, and chose to follow an older cousin studying at the University of Washington. He saved his earnings from raising and selling a prize steer and working on a strawberry and vegetable farm operated by the father of a close Japanese-American friend.
After high school, he moved to Seattle, living for a while with an aunt, and working to earn more money before enrolling in the University of Washington. His studies were soon interrupted by World War II. The Army kept him moving, but kept him in school, sending him to Rutgers to study Electrical Engineering. At one point they took the top four students from his group and assigned them to the Manhattan project. He was fifth. When the war ended before his mission as part of the Signal Corps for the invasion of Japan, he decided to continue his education at a school that would give him credit for the studies the Army had assigned him. He finished a degree at Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) in Quincy Massachusetts and a master’s in physics at Boston University in 2 years.
While at ENC, he met another student of the sciences, Grace White. He proposed to Grace by the old wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen of a house that is now part of the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, where Grace was living and working as an assistant to the three women doctors who owned the house at that time. They were married on July 2, 1948, following his graduation from ENC. Amazing Grace was his favorite song, springing from his deep faith and love for Grace.
Eldon took a job at the small company that had sponsored his master’s thesis and continued his studies with courses at MIT and Harvard before entering into a doctoral program in physics at Harvard. By this time, in 1952, he had two children and a house, and was working to support the family, making it challenging to continue with his studies. He found an ad on the bulletin board in the Physics Department at Harvard for a job at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now Draper).
His experience and studies in multiple fields provided Eldon the skills for designing small and reliable computers. He joined the team working on inertial guidance at MIT, and was asked to design the computer for the submarine-launched Polaris missile, which needed to be much smaller and more precise than land-based missiles, a requirement that drove miniaturization and also the transition from analog to digital computers.
In August of 1961, after President Kennedy announced the plan to go to the Moon, the first contract of that project was awarded to MIT, and Eldon led the group that designed the Apollo Guidance Computer. The Apollo mission was much more complicated than Polaris, navigating from Earth to the Moon, having two separate spacecraft that docked and undocked in orbit around Earth and the Moon, landing on the Moon and returning to Earth to the spot where the recovery ships were waiting. Eldon concluded that it was not possible to build a computer powerful enough, small enough and reliable enough with the components used in previous computers. Convincing NASA to commit to a new and untested technology, integrated circuits, he flew to what is now Silicon Valley in California and made the first major purchases of these components, jumpstarting the modern computer industry.
In 1982, along with astronaut David Scott, Eldon was the keynote speaker at the opening of the Computer History Museum. The museum has relocated from Boston to Mountain View, California, where there is now an exhibit on Eldon and the Apollo Guidance Computer.
After retiring from Draper in 1988, Eldon wrote a book, “Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer,” published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1996. He remained an active speaker at least into his late eighties, lecturing at numerous venues and events, including the Paris Air Show and the Smithsonian, and later continued granting interviews, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC being among the most recent.
Eldon was preceded in death by Grace, his wife of 72 years, and by his two sisters, Wilma Dewey and Beverly Caldwell. He is survived by his children, Brent and his wife Serena, Pamela Hall, Craig and his wife Tiki, and Gordon and his wife Gayle; his grandchildren, River Hall, Oak Hall and his wife Regina, Tiki’s daughter Lori Beer, Molly Hall, Sarah Hall, Kristyn Wirt and her husband Weston, Zachary Hall and his wife Shaylyn, Kaelyn Hall, and Ezekiel Hall; his great grandchildren, Stone Hall, Emmalyn Hall, and Regina’s children, Allie and her husband Michael Calliston, and Chase Erlewine; as well as many nieces and nephews and their families.
Eldon’s early years were spent on his family’s farm on the banks of the Snake River in eastern Oregon. After the death of his father when Eldon was seven years old, the family moved back across the river to Payette, Idaho. There was less land, but Eldon’s interest in farming remained strong; however, he was also interested in education, and chose to follow an older cousin studying at the University of Washington. He saved his earnings from raising and selling a prize steer and working on a strawberry and vegetable farm operated by the father of a close Japanese-American friend.
After high school, he moved to Seattle, living for a while with an aunt, and working to earn more money before enrolling in the University of Washington. His studies were soon interrupted by World War II. The Army kept him moving, but kept him in school, sending him to Rutgers to study Electrical Engineering. At one point they took the top four students from his group and assigned them to the Manhattan project. He was fifth. When the war ended before his mission as part of the Signal Corps for the invasion of Japan, he decided to continue his education at a school that would give him credit for the studies the Army had assigned him. He finished a degree at Eastern Nazarene College (ENC) in Quincy Massachusetts and a master’s in physics at Boston University in 2 years.
While at ENC, he met another student of the sciences, Grace White. He proposed to Grace by the old wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen of a house that is now part of the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, where Grace was living and working as an assistant to the three women doctors who owned the house at that time. They were married on July 2, 1948, following his graduation from ENC. Amazing Grace was his favorite song, springing from his deep faith and love for Grace.
Eldon took a job at the small company that had sponsored his master’s thesis and continued his studies with courses at MIT and Harvard before entering into a doctoral program in physics at Harvard. By this time, in 1952, he had two children and a house, and was working to support the family, making it challenging to continue with his studies. He found an ad on the bulletin board in the Physics Department at Harvard for a job at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now Draper).
His experience and studies in multiple fields provided Eldon the skills for designing small and reliable computers. He joined the team working on inertial guidance at MIT, and was asked to design the computer for the submarine-launched Polaris missile, which needed to be much smaller and more precise than land-based missiles, a requirement that drove miniaturization and also the transition from analog to digital computers.
In August of 1961, after President Kennedy announced the plan to go to the Moon, the first contract of that project was awarded to MIT, and Eldon led the group that designed the Apollo Guidance Computer. The Apollo mission was much more complicated than Polaris, navigating from Earth to the Moon, having two separate spacecraft that docked and undocked in orbit around Earth and the Moon, landing on the Moon and returning to Earth to the spot where the recovery ships were waiting. Eldon concluded that it was not possible to build a computer powerful enough, small enough and reliable enough with the components used in previous computers. Convincing NASA to commit to a new and untested technology, integrated circuits, he flew to what is now Silicon Valley in California and made the first major purchases of these components, jumpstarting the modern computer industry.
In 1982, along with astronaut David Scott, Eldon was the keynote speaker at the opening of the Computer History Museum. The museum has relocated from Boston to Mountain View, California, where there is now an exhibit on Eldon and the Apollo Guidance Computer.
After retiring from Draper in 1988, Eldon wrote a book, “Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer,” published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1996. He remained an active speaker at least into his late eighties, lecturing at numerous venues and events, including the Paris Air Show and the Smithsonian, and later continued granting interviews, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC being among the most recent.
Eldon was preceded in death by Grace, his wife of 72 years, and by his two sisters, Wilma Dewey and Beverly Caldwell. He is survived by his children, Brent and his wife Serena, Pamela Hall, Craig and his wife Tiki, and Gordon and his wife Gayle; his grandchildren, River Hall, Oak Hall and his wife Regina, Tiki’s daughter Lori Beer, Molly Hall, Sarah Hall, Kristyn Wirt and her husband Weston, Zachary Hall and his wife Shaylyn, Kaelyn Hall, and Ezekiel Hall; his great grandchildren, Stone Hall, Emmalyn Hall, and Regina’s children, Allie and her husband Michael Calliston, and Chase Erlewine; as well as many nieces and nephews and their families.