Jack Harker

John Mason "Jack" Harker (June 29, 1926 – April 27, 2013) was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and product and program manager who pioneered development of disk storage systems. Starting as a member of the original team that developed the first disk storage system, he went on to develop IBM Direct Access Storage products for the next 35 years. Over that time, Harker was twice director of the IBM San Jose Storage Laboratories, an IBM Fellow, and an IEEE Fellow. He retired from IBM in 1987 and died in 2013. Harker advanced through a series of positions at IBM to become the IBM San Jose Laboratory Director in 1972. He is best known for his leadership of the 1311 Disk File project, but he considered the 1350/1360 (Cypress) Image Storage System his most challenging assignment and the creation of the Technology and Advanced Development Group (TAD) in 1969 amongst his most important accomplishments. An early project was as a mechanical engineer on the original team developing the IBM 350 RAMAC disk storage unit, the world's first hard disk drive.

After RAMAC his next project was working for Alan Shugart on the IBM 1301. Harker led development of the first self flying disk heads. As Air Bearing Development Manager, Harker led the development effort for self-acting air bearings, which lowered the disk heads and relied on flying them over the surface using the air flow from the disk underneath instead of the pressurized air from an air compressor as used by RAMAC. Hard disk drives today continue to use self-acting air bearings.

Harker led the IBM 1311 project as the engineering manager for the first successful removable disk drive.

From 1960 to 1969 he was first the engineering manager and then Program Manager for development and delivery of the IBM 1350 Photo Image Retrieval System / 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System. The IBM 1360 was the first "trillion-bit" data storage system (about 160 GB). It was developed for the Atomic Energy Commission.

From 1969 to 1972 he was Direct Access Storage Product Manager responsible for what was then IBM's most profitable line of business. During the time, work was put into place that led to the “Winchester” magnetic recording components and thin film recording structures.

In 1972, Harker first became the director, San Jose Development Laboratory. Thin film disk heads

Harker later held the positions of Director of Technology for IBM and later, again Director of the San Jose Laboratories before his retirement in 1987. He died in 2013.