Obit watch: October 3, 2019.

Bill Bidwill, owner of the Arizona (formerly St. Louis) Cardinals.

Under Bidwill’s ownership, the Cardinals toiled in mediocrity. They had five winning seasons from 1972 until Ken Whisenhunt was hired as head coach in 2007, Michael’s first year in charge. The Cardinals went to their first and only Super Bowl the next season.

I’m wondering if we’re going to see an NFL team for sale soon, and if that’s going to result in a possible relocation. LA and Las Vegas are off the map…but with the St. Louis Rams gone, and a past history for the Cardinals there…?

John Rothman. Kind of an obscure figure, but interesting: he pioneered electronic access to the NYT archives.

Working on the index led Mr. Rothman to think about how computers could store, sort and deliver abstracts of Times content to users at the paper and other locations, like public libraries, universities and major corporations. He proposed the Information Bank — the Times Index writ large — in 1965 and began working on it with IBM the next year.

In 1972, Times staff members began testing the Information Bank as a research tool. It would soon augment the paper’s archives, known as the morgue, where file cabinets are packed with clippings dating to the 19th century. In Times Talk, the paper’s in-house newsletter, Mr. Rothman assured colleagues that “once the basic methods” of searching the Information Bank were mastered, “retrieving the information is quite simple.”
In late 1972, the first installation of the Information Bank outside The New York Times was made at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library. Within six months, its 14 customers included NBC, The Associated Press, the State Department, the C.I.A., the Library of Congress, Exxon and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

I’ve been running behind, so for this historical record: Jessye Norman.

2 Responses to “Obit watch: October 3, 2019.”

  1. AuricTech says:

    Back when the Carpetbaggers were in St. Louis, there were people selling “Trade Bidwill” buttons.

  2. stainles says:

    I kind of want one of those now.

    Sadly, eBay doesn’t turn up any. (Though it does surprise me, on an unrelated note, how many vintage Dundee marmalade jars show up there.)