Ben Riggins

From CICS Wiki

(The history on the father of CICS as related by Bob Yelavich)

I have been involved with CICS since 1968. I taught Ben Riggins and his (then) small staff, BTAM. Ben Riggins is the father of CICS. He was a CE/FE at one time and switched over to being an SE. He was located in Richmond, Virginia when he came up with the idea for what we know today as CICS. His account at that time was Virginia Electric Power Co (VEPCO).

CICS is entirely Ben's creation. There may have been a person with the initials "DFH" somewhere in the universe, alive or dead, past or present, but he never had anything to do with CICS. When Ben was given the go-ahead to do something with his idea, he moved to Des Plaines, Illinois, which was the first development location for CICS.

Initially, Ben reported to a manager (Skip White) who had an industry responsibility and he really didn't manage CICS. The first CICS Development or Product Manager was Gerry Anderson. Both Ben and Gerry have been retired from IBM for some years now.

Among Ben's small group initially were Gerry Hughes, to whom Ben gave the responsibility for the original master terminal (CSMT) and other transactions like that. Carl Leinfelder was given Terminal Control, John Lawrence had Program Control (and the introduction of COBOL and PL/I support in 1970), and Ray VanderVliet had File Control.

Thanks to Bob Yelavich for this information

Here is a link to Bob's website that show a photo of Ben Riggins:

Admin 08:31, 26 October 2007 (CDT)