An innovating pioneer in both electrical engineering and genealogical research, Stephen P. Morse is the father of the 8086 Intel processor as well as the founder of the One-Step Webpages search tool for genealogists. His love of teaching has helped him develop an uncanny ability to transform any complex and onerous task into an easily understood series of instructions, whether for machines or humans.
From childhood to adulthood, Morse has always been intrigued by gadgetry, especially ones involving electricity. While he kept himself entertained as a youngster by creating Rube Goldberg-type inventions, his later innovations of the genealogical website applications that he would become known for have helped thousands of people with their family history research.
For people who want to know more about their deceased relatives, Steve knows more about finding them than most living people. During the last couple of decades, he has gathered a tremendous amount of fame by sharing that knowledge with others.
Beginnings and Middles, but Memories Never End
Steve Morse was born in the Crown Heights Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, United States, in 1940. He and his parents and grandmother resided in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush section until Steve was 11 months old. The Morse family of 4 then moved a mile away to an apartment on Newport Street in Brownsville, where they would later be joined by Steve’s baby sister. Sadly, Steve’s father passed away when Steve was 10 years old, but he still has fond memories of when they spent time together, such as writing poems on their house stoop and watching pumpernickel get sliced at their local bakery.
“I lived [in Brownsville] for 24 years until I was married,” Steve informs us. “That’s where all my childhood memories were formed.”
As a child, Stephen was drawn to learning how electrical devices worked and was fascinated early on with a toy Morse Code (no relation) telegraph set. “I loved this toy because of the basic knowledge of electrical circuits that it taught and also because it was fun to play with,” he remarks. An electronic quiz board game was another favorite of the day. Both were key to fostering his love of electricity.
Childhood Dreams and a Mother’s Advice
When he was young and people asked him what he wanted to be when he got older, Steve would have told them a “professional baseball player!” Before long, he realized he unfortunately wasn’t an athlete, so he figured he could announce the baseball games instead. After Morse discovered he had a knack for math, becoming an accountant like his father seemed the natural thing to do. But after his father’s death, Steve put an end to his accountancy aspirations.
“By the time I was in 9th grade, I knew I loved mathematics and electricity, so I asked my mother what profession would combine those two fields,” says Steve. “She replied, ‘Electrical engineering,’ and from that point on, I knew what I wanted to be.”
Education in Academics and in Life
Steve Morse went on to get a bachelor's degree and 2 graduate degrees in electrical engineering. “But in spite of that,” he tells us, “I never spent a day in my life as an electrical engineer. Electrical engineering was closely tied to computer science, and that shift was an easy one.
“My first 2 jobs after obtaining my Ph.D. were in industry: the IBM Research Center, followed by a research position at Compagnie Internationale pour l’Informatique in France.” Both opportunities allowed Dr. Morse quality time working in his element. Working at the IBM Research Center allowed him to bide his time in his desired career field while waiting for one of his favorite professors, his thesis advisor, to return from sabbatical so he could be officially declared a doctor. Meanwhile, IBM hired the young postgraduate as though he’d earned his doctorate.
His following research job relocated Steve and his wife, Anita, near Paris, France, for 2 years. Although he was concerned that working in Europe would stagnate his career, Steve was pleasantly surprised to see that it did the opposite. “As it turns out, one of the things that gained me widespread recognition occurred while I was there,” he explains. “I coauthored a paper on a new technique for compiling programs (known as “weak precedence”), and that earned me references in many textbooks on computer languages and compilers for years to come.”
The Not-So-Famous Father of a Most Famous Computer Chip
When he was 36, Steve’s bosses at Intel assigned him as lead architect for a project that established the foundation of all personal computer CPU designs for the next 30 years. As one of the patent holders, he literally wrote the book on the subject—a bestseller that officially established the relatively young Stephen P. Morse as the chip’s creator. Further advancements on the original 8086, each named individually in a sequence of higher numbers—286, 386, 486, and so on—are together referred to as the x86 series.
Contemplate the profound nature of his contribution for a moment. The chances are extremely high that the work he did for Intel was the foundation for the electronic tools you’re using right now to read this sentence. Not only was it the groundwork, Steve’s work was also the gateway to what is now the information superhighway. Steve is humble about the subject, bringing it up early on as if to get it out of the way and then brushing it off with comments about how the inventor would have been somebody else if not him—though he quickly points out the design would be vastly different.
Stepping into Genealogy
“My interest in genealogy started when I was a teenager after I became confused by my mother's very large family,” says Morse. “Her mother was one of 22 siblings. So I asked my mother to help me create a family tree of both her family and my father's family. I kept those trees in my memorabilia shoe box. My interest in genealogy then became dormant and remained that way for many years.”
But the seeds were planted! And in 1992, a friend alerted him to the release of the 1920 census.
“At first I didn't think that a census would be of much interest to me, but I went down to the National Archives to view the census just to humor my friend,” he tells us. “I discovered my family in that census, and from that point on, I was hooked!”
Once he realized there were public records about his family he had never seen, Steve sought out all such records and learned as much as he could about his family. That was the moment he became a genealogist.
All the Journeys Along the Way Lead to One-Step
Steve Morse’s career has taken him and his family to many corners of the United States that are related to technological industry hubs and academic hot spots. He loved teaching, and he was trying to decide if he wanted to go into academia or go into industry and teach part-time. So he took a job with the University of California at Berkeley to give academia a try.
While at Berkeley, he discovered that the salaries in universities were only half of what he could get in industry. He also didn't like the pressure to get tenure.
This realization solidified Steve’s inclination toward an industrial career, and he was hired by the General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York.
After a couple of years living in New York with all the snow, Steve kept his eyes open for another opportunity in the San Francisco area. The opportunity came in 1975 when Intel Corporation, a little-known company at the time, contacted him. (One story has it that Steve’s affinity for Volkswagen engines made for an amicably smooth Intel interview. Years later Steve's fascination with locks helped him at a job interview with Netscape.)
“I continued working in the valley for a few more years, but not all with Intel,” Steve says. This was at a time when computers—especially PCs—were becoming more prevalent and getting faster. He got involved with some startups that either failed or didn’t quite get off the ground before he returned to Intel.
In 1985, Steve made another major career decision: he decided to become a consultant. He immediately obtained 2 lucrative long-term overlapping contracts, one with RCA Corporation and another with Alsys, a very promising start-up company in Boston. After a couple years, Alsys brought Morse aboard full-time as a consultant, moving his family to Paris for a year. His history of having lived in Paris previously certainly didn't hurt.
Many years later, he received an unsolicited job offer from Netscape, the near dominant web browser in the mid-1990s. The Netscape offer was right in the middle of the internet revolution, both in timing and geographically, in Silicon Valley.
“So I switched companies for what I knew would be my final time—if Netscape didn’t work out or if I got tired of working there, I decided the next step would be retirement.” Retirement didn’t happen until 6 years later when, after surviving about a dozen lay-offs at Netscape, Steve was finally let go as well. Six months after that, Netscape shut down. “But by this time, I had become immersed in developing website applications for genealogical research,” Steve says.
One-Step's Beginning
And here’s what happened: in 2001 he learned that the Ellis Island database was going to be put online and would be searchable by name. Anxious to try, he quickly realized the Ellis Island website was very hard to use, and each search took multiple steps. Furthermore, it could be used only very early in the morning because of heavy demand. Steve spent many hours unsuccessfully searching, but by doing so, he also learned the structure of the website. He realized his time would be better spent creating a tool that would do the searching for him. It was as if all his jobs until then had led to that moment when he developed that tool, and with that tool, he was immediately able to locate his wife's missing grandfather.
“That was at 4 a.m. of the second morning, and I quickly ran upstairs to tell my wife,” says Steve. “But she wasn't too happy to hear this, as she bolted upright in bed.”
“I was very excited when I was contacted the next year by a former colleague, Dave Kehs, who said that he was working with a fellow named Joel Weintraub to create tables to allow people to search by address in the about-to-be released 1930 census,” Steve explains. “Dave and Joel had the tables, but they didn't know how to turn that into a web-based search tool. They were both familiar with my Ellis Island work and realized that I could create the tool for them. So I did that, and I was no longer a one-trick pony—I now had 2 tools, both of which were gaining worldwide attention. The website then kept growing, and today it has over 300 tools, mostly related to genealogy.”
A Surprise Rock Star of Family History Research
One of Stephen P. Morse’s most treasured moments was when he suddenly felt like an adored rock star at a major genealogical conference in Canada.
“I had created a useful genealogy website and suddenly realized that I had become somewhat of a rock star,” Steve tells us. “That happened when I was invited to give a lecture at a major conference in Toronto in 2002. Although many people had been using my website, none of them had ever seen me. So when I went up to the desk to register and gave my name, all the heads turned to look at me.”
That was when he started getting invitations to speak to different organizations. His wife advised him to tell the societies that he would travel out there when the weather warmed up. He replied that this was his 15 minutes of fame and that they wouldn't want him in 6 months. He didn't realize that the 15 minutes of fame would turn out to be over 2 decades and still counting.
The Journey Continues
Steve’s fascination for electronics and technology continues today. His recent tinkering included using a traffic light to assist in parking a vehicle in his garage. The creativity, dedication, and skill that have brought thousands closer to their relatives and ancestors are still going strong.
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