I am sad to report, belatedly, that Ed Ross passed away in August 2017.
Readers of Exploding The Phone will remember Ed as one of the first phone phreaks, one of the kids who hacked the phone system at Harvard back in 1962—the kids the FBI thought were maybe a spy ring.
Ed wasn't a spy but he was certainly brilliant. One of his phone phreak co-conspirators at Harvard described him as a "music maven and mathematical prodigy who prided himself on not knowing anything about electronics" and yet who still passed the FCC first-class radiotelephone license by wits alone: "Ed Ross didn't even study. He went and took that test and passed it, just from the logic of the multiple choice questions."
Ed was delightful and witty, with a charming smile and a wonderful, inclusive attitude. I recall a group dinner he hosted in Berkeley with an interesting and eclectic mix of people. It was about an hour after dinner was supposed to have been served and, though there was plenty of wine, we were all starting to get a bit hungry. Ed made an announcement: "Tonight's dinner is an Ed Ross project. As such, it has the two things that all Ed Ross projects have in common. One, it's ambitious. Two, it's late." (It was worth the wait.)
Exploding the Phone's publication in 2013 was an excuse to get some of the Harvard kids back together. Here from left to right, Charlie Pyne, Tony Lauck, and Ed Ross recreate the 1966 photo from Fortune magazine. (Ed wasn't in the original photo, but is standing in for Paul Heckel.)
One final Ed story that readers of this blog will identify with. In 2012 I was living in Bangalore, India, and somewhat randomly, Ed and his sweetie had a vacation planned in Goa and invited me to join them. During a lovely visit with them, I scribbled this entry in my notebook:
Ed usually has either a thoughtful expression or a smile on his face. He seems to lurch a little bit as he walks, often wading out into into the formidable traffic on Indian streets as if driven by Brownian motion and yet, thankfully, he never seems to get run over. Having lived in the UK since 1966, he now speaks with an English accent—funny for a guy who grew up in the Bronx. His mannerisms are the very model of the absent-minded but brilliant academic.
We went to a market in Mapusa and from there took a bus to the beach at Calangute, about 40 minutes away. The bus ride cost 20 cents and took almost an hour. The bus itself was crowded and noisy, absolutely packed with people. I had given my seat to an elderly Indian woman and was standing in the aisle next to Ed. As we got closer to our destination, I noticed that people who wanted to get off would whistle at the driver. In the U.S., I guess we'd pull a cord to stop the bus, but not having cords, they just whistled. They had to whistle pretty loudly to be heard over the noise of the bus and the traffic, but they were equal to the challenge and the driver would pull over and let them out. It seemed to work well.
After a few minutes of this Ed looked up at me with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face.
"Tone-based signaling system," he said.
We miss you, Ed. The dial tone is fainter for your absence.
* * *
A more formal obituary from the May-June 2018 issue of Harvard Magazine, one that emphasizes some of his more respectable achievements:
Edward Sherman Ross ’63 died August 9, 2017, in London. He worked in several computing jobs at the University of London before joining the Gallup organization to write and design programs for analyzing data. He went on to author several analysis programs, culminating in the Quantum platform, still widely in use. In 1978 he founded the software company Quantime, known for its statistical programming language Quantum and the world’s first interactive analysis program, Quanvert; by 1996 the company had more than $16 million in revenue and some 150 employees in offices throughout Europe and North America. After selling the company in 1997, he co-founded OpenSurvey, focused on developing commonly agreed standards for survey software, and in 2017 he became executive chairman of Digital Taxonomy, a start-up engaged in the application of technology, including artificial intelligence, for interpreting data gathered in surveys. A polymath, along the way he acquired two master’s degrees in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and he possessed an encyclopedic and eclectic knowledge of movies and music. He leaves a daughter, Maya, a son, Jonathan, and his former wife, Susan.
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