Floyd George Steele (June 28, 1918 – September 23, 1995) was an American physicist, engineer, and computer designer who grew up in Brush, Colorado.
Before joining Northrop he worked for Douglas Aircraft from 1941 to 1944 and while in the Navy attended Captain Eddie's Radar School.
[2] Another influence to the MADDIDA's design was Lord Kelvin's Tide Predicting Machine, an analog computer completed in 1873.
[2] Steele hired Donald Eckdahl, Hrant (Harold) Sarkinssian, and Richard Sprague to work on the MADIDDA's germanium diode logic circuits and also to do magnetic recording.
[4] Soon after the MADIDDA's completion, Steele and his team realized that a general-purpose digital computer could also be used to as a differential analyzer through the use of an appropriate simulation language.