Computer pioneer Arnold Spielberg, father of Steven Spielberg, dead at 103

Arnold Spielberg (right) with his son, director Steven Spielberg, at 2006 Oscars. Arnold Spielberg was an early pioneer of computer engineer, whose work helped make the personal computer possible. Photo: AP

Arnold Spielberg, the father of filmmaker Steven Spielberg, died on Tuesday. He was 103.

Steven Spielberg was with his father on the night of his passing, telling him "You are our hearth. You are our home." He also said of his father, who was an electrical engineer at General Electric for a time,"When I see a PlayStation, when I look at a cell phone – from the smallest calculator to an iPad – I look at my dad and I say, 'My dad and a team of geniuses started that.'"

In addition to Steven, he had three daughters, Anne, Nancy and Sue.

In a joint statement, Spielberg's children said their father taught them to "love to research, expand their mind, keep their feet on the ground, but reach for the stars [and] look up."

"Thank you for my life. I love you, Dad, Daddy, Daddelah. And then so then, and then so then, what happens next..." they told him.

Spielberg was born on Feb. 6,1917, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and soon developed a passion for learning and innovation. At age 6, he turned his family's attic into a makeshift lab and crafted inventions, inviting his friends over to hold onto the electrodes of a shock machine he made out of wiring batteries together.

At age 12, he got his first ham radio, which opened the door to a lifetime of sharing stories with strangers over the airwaves.

The love of storytelling was something he passed on to his children. "He made friends over the radio. He heard from people he never knew existed. He connected with strangers and this affability is something he carried over into real life, often befriending another person in line at Starbucks or the table next to him," his daughter Sue Spielberg said.

In December of 1941, Spielberg enlisted as a sergeant in the Army, going on to work as a radio operator and chief communications man for the 490th Bomb Squadron, also known as the "Burma Bridge Busters."

When Spielberg returned from the war in 1945, he married Leah Posner, who was a talented concert pianist, and Steven was born the following year.

Their children grew up in an environment that encouraged both logical reasoning and marching to the beat of their own drums.

Spielberg returned to school and received a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. Upon graduating in 1949, he got a job at RCA in Camden, New Jersey. He worked on RCA's first commercial and business computer, the RCA BIZMAC, in the early days of computing.

In 1956, he joined General Electric and helped design the GE-200 series of mainframe computers. Spielberg's career in electronics also took him to Electronic Arrays, SDS, Burroughs and IBM, taking him around the world. He also won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer's Computer Pioneer Award.

In 2012, Spielberg was recognised by the Shoah Foundation Institute of the University of Southern California for his promotion of humanity through technology, his years of mentorship and his cataloguing and organising of Holocaust testimonials.

Until his final days, Spielberg would take online classes in everything from thermodynamics to history to astronomy. With his children, he would watch movies, listen to classical music, read "the funnies' and spend time on his patio overlooking the Pacific Palisades. – By Jordan Moreau/Reuters