Wen Tsing Chow

Who was Wen Tsing Chow?

Wen Tsing Chow, was a Chinese-born American missile guidance scientist and a digital computer pioneer.

Mr. Chow was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi in 1918. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Chiao Tung University in 1940 and an M.S. in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1942.

Mr. Chow, working for the Arma Division of the American Bosch Arma Corporation, pioneered the use of digital computers in missile, satellite and spacecraft guidance systems, leading the design of the United States Air Force Atlas E/F ICBM all-inertial guidance system and guidance computer, the first production airborne digital computer. Mr. Chow personally formulated the design of the first all solid state, high reliability, space-borne digital computer and established the basic systems approach and mechanization of America's ICBM guidance systems.

Mr. Chow invented and holds a fundamental patent on what is now commonly known as programmable read-only memory or PROM. PROM, in the late 1950s called a "constants storage matrix," was invented for the Atlas E/F ICBM airborne digital computer.