Professor Derek S. Henderson and the Fourier transform

Abstract

Derek Henderson played a critical role in the introduction and development of Computer Science at the University of the Witwatersrand - and, by the way, in my career as well. There were no Computer Science courses at Wits when I started my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering studies in 1961. I did learn, though, at some point that a would soon arrive and be installed in the Electrical Engineering building. I did not know what that might be, but it sure sounded interesting! To cut a long story short, because of Dr Henderson's kindness, I was able to learn how to use it, and in 1965 Pieter Kritzinger and I ended up doing our Bachelor's theses on a comparison of optimal signal filtering methods using analogue and digital computers. This was on the Computer Centre's IBM 1620, which, by the way, was a lot less finicky than the analogue computer with its numerous failure-prone op-amps that it was competing against.