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Douglas C. Webb

Doug Webb (left) and Dave Fratantoni.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announces with great sorrow the death of innovator in oceanographic research technology, pioneer in the development of transistorized computers, and former WHOI employee Douglas C. Webb on November 11, 2024.

Doug was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on November 25, 1929, to Bess (Gilpin) and William Webb.  As a child he spent summers on his grandparent’s farm in Hagersville, where he gained a lifelong appreciation for pragmatism, hard work and love of family.   During summers in high school, he worked as a waiter and engine room oiler on coal-fired steam ships plying Lake Huron.

He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Queens University (Canada) in 1952. To pursue his interest in the nascent field of computer science,  Doug moved to Manchester, UK, to work for Ferranti Ltd. and to pursue graduate study at the University of Manchester, where he obtained his MSEE in 1954. There, Doug and doctoral student Dick Grimsdale built and demonstrated the world’s first transistorized digital computer in November 1953. This experimental machine went on to become the Metrovick 950, the first commercial transistorized computer built from 1959 onwards by Metropolitan Vickers.  (Doug would occasionally chat with Professor Alan Turing, who had a nearby office).

While in England, Doug and his roommate pooled their money to purchase a 1924, Type 23 Brescia Bugatti, which he raced with other vintage car lovers. In the summer of 1956, Doug drove another vintage car (a primitive 1926 British Trojan, with a top speed of 35 mph) from England to Greece and back, with many roadside repairs and adventures along the way.

Doug was married in 1957 to Shirley (Lyons) Webb, an artist and kindergarten teacher who shared his love of adventure. They had been high school classmates in Owen Sound, Ontario. The couple moved to Ivrea, Italy, where Doug was employed by Olivetti in the early development of computers for business applications.  They became fluent in Italian and fell in love with Italian culture and food, a far cry from small-town Canadian life. They traveled around Europe on a single-cylinder motorcycle, and sailed the Mediterranean on their wooden sailboat Meg.

In 1962, they returned to North America, crossing the Atlantic on a cargo ship (during the Cuban missile crisis) with their baby daughter Becca, their Siamese cat Mimo, the Bugatti, the sailboat, and seven trunks of Shirley’s paintings. They moved to Woods Hole where Doug was employed by WHOI. Doug began his career at WHOI in 1962 as an electronics search assistant.  Doug was promoted several time throughout his career and left WHOI in 1982. Their son, Dan, was born in Falmouth.

During four decades at WHOI, Doug created and developed numerous technologies used in oceanographic research and participated in dozens of long research cruises.  His work involved inventing and building instruments to remotely measure the properties and motion of water in the deep ocean. Webb’s expertise in the technology of long-range undersea acoustic signaling contributed to the development of Ocean Acoustic Tomography, a technique used for large-scale remote sensing of the interior of the ocean.

In 1966, Doug and Shirley purchased a century-old farmhouse on Old Palmer Avenue from his friend and colleague Dr. Henry Stommel, who moved across the street.  This transaction was covered in the Falmouth Enterprise on November 18, 1966. They raised their young family there, and it was their home for decades.

In 1971, Doug and Dr. Roger Payne published a seminal paper postulating that the songs of fin whales could be heard across vast distances, and suggested that noise from commercial shipping might interfere with whale communication.  The idea seemed far-fetched at the time but is now widely accepted.

In 1982, Doug left WHOI to form his own company, Webb Research Corporation (WRC), which invented and manufactured instruments for physical oceanography and naval research. The company developed a family of products which used neutral and variable buoyancy to control the depth of instruments in the ocean, as well as long-range low-frequency acoustic sources. Their products were used by laboratories in 20 nations, and are central to the international ARGO program, a global array of thousands of autonomous ocean sensor platforms.

Doug conceived and developed the undersea glider, a long-endurance winged undersea autonomous vehicle, propelled by buoyancy changes rather than a propeller.  In 1994 he was granted a patent for a unique thermal engine which used energy harvested from oceanic temperature differences to propel the glider.

In 2009, Rutgers University deployed a battery powered version of the glider for the first-ever trans-Atlantic crossing of an autonomous underwater vehicle, which arrived in Baiona, Spain, where, 516 years earlier, the first of Christopher Columbus’ ships returned from the new world. The glider was subsequently displayed in the Smithsonian Museum.   Another glider, owned by the US Navy, gained international notoriety when it was briefly seized by China in 2016. This technology is now a staple of ocean research and monitoring.

Webb Research Corporation was sold to Teledyne in 2008 and became Teledyne Webb Research for which Doug continued to consult until recently.

The author of over 60 publications, and with 15 US patents to his name, Doug, along with Dr. Thomas Rossby of the University of Rhode Island, received the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Bigelow Medal in 1988, and he received the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society’s 2005 Distinguished Technical Achievement Award. He was also the recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Science Award in 2017.  In 2021, he was appointed Oceanographer Emeritus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for work that “crossed and merged the boundaries of science and technology in elegant fashion.”

Oceanographic technologies pioneered by Webb are in use today all over the world and have contributed to an exponential increase in the amount of data extracted from the oceans, for oceanography, meteorology, climate change research, and naval applications.  His work was characterized by a tenacious and painstaking pursuit of optimization in design.

Doug was an avid reader, a sailor, a lover of family, cats, travel, mystery novels, puns, and Italian food. Adept with a sextant, slide rule or oscilloscope, his dress code was as informal as his engineering was meticulous.  He was proud of his Canadian heritage and drove his family 12 hours to Canada each Christmas, to keep close ties with their relatives. As an octogenarian, Doug fully restored and drove his beloved Bugatti that he had raced sixty years earlier in England.

He was predeceased by his wife of 58 years, Shirley, in 2015, and is survived by his daughter Rebecca Webb of Rochester, NY, and his son Daniel Webb and wife Mary of Falmouth, MA, and their children Harrison and Avery.

A celebration of life will be held at a later date, to be announced.  In lieu of flowers, a donation to Oxfam America would be welcomed.

Information for this obituary is from Doug’s family