Arnold Meyer Spielberg died August 25 at age 103. The father of celebrated film director Steven Spielberg, the senior Spielberg was an electrical engineer of uncommon invention and productivity. Having developed research that would make the personal computer possible, the elder Spielberg’s contributions to modern life worldwide are almost impossible to avoid.

He helped design and build the first business computer, patented the first electronic library system, and designed the first electronic cash register. Before that, as a communications chief in the Army Signal Corps in 1942, he joined the Burma Bridge Busters, a B-25 bomber squadron based outside present-day Kolkata that targeted Japanese railroad lines, shipping and communications in Burma.

When Steven Spielberg founded the USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education, he recruited his father to lead the development team of the digital Shoah Institute archives, organizing more than 100,000 hours of visual history in 52,000 video testimonies in 32 languages of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses from 56 countries.