Arthur David Hall III

Who was Arthur David Hall III?

Arthur David Hall III was an American electrical engineer and a pioneer in the field of systems engineering. He is known as author of a widely used engineering textbook "A Methodology for Systems Engineering" from 1962.

Hall attended Brookville High School in Lynchburg, Virginia. He served in the Army during World War II. After the war he studied electrical engineering at Princeton University, graduating in 1949. He started his career as electrical engineer for Bell Labs, where he worked for many years. In the 1950s he started his own consulting business, and in the 1960s, Hall was faculty member at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Hall was a founding member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 1965, Hall was the first editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics. Hall later became a senior IEEE fellow. He is listed in Who’s Who Men of Science as the father of the "picture telephone", and creator of the patented "Auto Farm System", which provides global positioning equipment for precision farming. His further hobbies included flying, yachting, photography, and gardening.