Jerre Noe joined SRI as one of the original group that came to SRI from Fred Terman’s Radio Research Lab (RRL) at Harvardóthe group that formed the first Engineering activity here in 1948.
Jerre Noe, who served as Director of the Information Sciences and Engineering Division for many years, was the prime mover to establish SRI's position in the newly emerging fields of computers and information engineering. He set up new laboratories in computers under Byron Bennett, control systems under Fred Kamphoefner, and several other areas that were undergoing rapid development in the 1950s and 1960s.
When Hoot Gibson, SRI's Executive VP, introduced Bank of America President Clark Beise to Tom Morrin and SRI's engineers, it was Jerre Noe who responded with the proposals to B of A to develop a highly automated banking system, including new high-speed check-handling hardware and associated computational systems. The ensuing project, called ERMA for Electronic Recording Machine Accounting, became the largest commercial project at SRI in the 1950s and continued for seven or eight years. The Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) system developed in this project is used today to process billions of bank checks all over the world.
Jerre Noe continued to build his Division capabilities, supporting strong projects in new television technology, electron devices, graphic sciences, and a new lab under Charlie Rosen called Learning Machines, which evolved into the Artificial Intelligence Center and is continuing strongly today.
Jerre reflected the strong background and values of the Harvard group, just as Fred Terman and John Granger had done. He was always a strong technical leader and a friend to all his staff. He was particularly encouraging to the young engineers who joined his Division.
He was an avid sailor and skier and an accomplished musician, playing the flute in some local groups. In 1970 he left SRI to join the University of Washington as the Chairman of the Computer Sciences Department. He now lives in Seattle.