| Biography | Gladeon Marcus Barnes was a United States Army major general who, as Chief of Research and Engineering in the Ordnance Department, was responsible for the development of 1,600 different weapons. He is best known for his involvement in the development of the M4 Sherman and the M26 Pershing tanks, as well as the ENIAC computer.
During World War I, he was responsible for the design of coastal and railway artillery. Between the wars, he served in Germany and Italy. He graduated from the Army Industrial College in 1936, and from the Army War College in 1938. He then became the Chief of the Research and Engineering Office of the Ordnance Department. Having witnessed the power of German tanks in the Spanish Civil War, he designed the 37 mm Gun M3, a light but powerful anti-tank gun.
In 1943, Barnes launched a secret project to create an enormous electronic computer, which came to be called ENIAC. He supervised its development by the researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. While it was too late to perform ballistic calculations for World War II, John von Neumann put it to work performing the complex calculations required by the hydrogen bomb. |