F. W. Jordan

Who is F. W. Jordan?

Frank Wilfred Jordan was a British physicist who together with William Henry Eccles invented the so-called "flip-flop" circuit in 1918. This circuit became the basis of electronic memory in computers.

Frank Wilfred Jordan was born in 1882 in Canterbury, Kent, England, the son of Edward James Jordan and Eliza Edith. Jordan received his secondary education at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, Kent, England. From 1899 to 1904, he was a student at the Royal College of Science, from which he graduated with an Associateship in physics and a master of science degree. In 1912 he was a "lecturer in physics", presumably at the Royal College of Science. In 1918 he was an "electrician" at City and Guilds Technical College. There is little else known about him.

This flip-flop circuit became the most important circuit in computer technology for it can be given a large number of different actions.