Louis Howard Zimmerman

Louis Zimmerman, a network engineer whose work helped launch New York City’s groundbreaking 911 emergency dispatch system and build infrastructure for the modern internet, died on January 22. He was 81. Mr. Zimmerman began his career as a captain in the United States Air Force. Stationed with the Strategic Air Command near Omaha, Nebraska in 1964, he worked with a team that developed communication systems responsible for monitoring nuclear missiles at the height of the Cold War. During his time in the Air Force, the Strategic Air Command also helped motivate the development of a new system that came to be know as “Arpanet,” a network of computers that could continue vital defense communications in the event of a nuclear attack. Arpanet would provide the building blocks for the global computer network that would become the Internet. After leaving the Air Force in 1968, Mr. Zimmerman was tapped to work with the team that would launch New York City’s 911 emergency dispatch system. The New York City emergency system would become the first major city to link police, and eventually fire and emergency services, in a single computerized network, under a simple three digit number. The NYC 911 system became a national model and would continue to connect emergency services for decades, until it was updated in 2012 for the “cellphone era.” In the 1990s, Mr. Zimmerman co-founded Sync Research, a network company, based in Irvine, CA, whose products connected mainframe computer systems with personal computers around the world. Building links between large IBM mainframes, as well as AT&T’s systems, Sync provided hardware that managed traffic over the burgeoning internet. Mr. Zimmerman was born in Yonkers, New York in 1940 to Morris and Marian Zimmerman. As a child, he devoured books, nearly exhausting what existed at the local library. Quiet and kind, but with a keen, analytical mind and a wry sense of humor, he excelled at chemistry, physics and chess, became a New York State bridge champion in high school, and graduated New Rochelle high school as a National Merit Scholar. In his spare time, he enjoyed the outdoors, waterskiing, and visiting the national parks with his family. Mr. Zimmerman is survived by his wife, Lynne, his sister Judy, his son and daughter, Adam and Rachel, and his grandson, Jonah. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Louis's name to the National Park Foundation at https://www.nationalparks.org/