August 19, 2007:
The Ellis Island Database: An Easier Search
Led by very special guest Stephen Morse, originator of the one-step
approach to the Ellis Island Database.
In April 2001 the Ellis Island ship manifests and passenger records went on-line. A few weeks later the One-Step Ellis Island website was created to make this resource easier to use. Since that time the One-Step site has been greatly expanded to include new search capabilities and an array of color-coded search forms.
This talk will describe the evolution of the website from both a historical and a practical perspective, and provide a beacon for navigating through this color maze.
Stephen Morse is an amateur genealogist who has been researching his Russian-Jewish origins for the past few years. Several years ago he developed some web-based searching aids which, much to his surprise, have attracted attention worldwide. He has received both the Outstanding Contribution Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, and the Award of Merit from the National Genealogical Society.
In his other life Morse is a computer professional with a doctorate degree in electrical engineering from New York University. He has held research positions at Bell Labs, IBM Watson Research, GE Corporate R&D, and Compagnie Internationale pour l'Informatique in France. He has been involved in development at Intel Corp, Alsys Inc, and Netscape. He has taught at CCNY, Pratt Institute, UC Berkeley, SUNY Albany, Stanford University, and San Francisco State. He has authored numerous technical papers, written four textbooks, and holds four patents. He is best known as the architect of the Intel 8086 (the granddaddy of today's pentium processor), which sparked the PC revolution 25 years ago. |
