Charles Bachman, who is in the picture, was an orchid lover who built and raced Soap Box Derby cars. What else was he known for?

Charles William Bachman Jr. was born Dec. 11, 1924, in Manhattan, Kansas and grew up in East Lansing, Michigan. His mother was a nutritionist and his father was the football coach at what is now Kansas State University and Michigan State University.

Mr. Bachman joined General Electric in 1960 when computers were bulky, costly and disappointing. The creation of disk storage allowed computers to access and alter individual records much faster. He devised a kind of road map that would allow programs to access a vast database and make changes within fractions of a second. His road map, created with a GE team in the early 1960's was known as the Integrated Data Store, or IDS. It is widely considered the world's first database management system, an essential yet seldom recognized part of modern computing.

In 2012 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama. He passed away July 13, 2017.

At the time he and his GE team devised the first database system, he recalled, "We were using 1960 computers which filled a room and had less power and less data storage capacity than today's smart telephone."