The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 14

1 4 Prt Jan. 14, OBITUARIES 1980 CcsAnjjekB (Times Finn Ronne, 80, Inventor of High Speed Computer Dies Physicist Developed Machine to Help With Weather Project room numbering system. Mauchly always said he enjoyed teaching more than designing computers or dealing in business. As head of the physics department at Ursinus College and later at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, Mauchly had a penchant for entertaining his students. One of his favorite "scientific" demonstrations was to drop a box filled with glass to the floor and, in the ensuing crash, explain: "That's how to determine what's in a box without opening it." As co-inventor of the first "thinking machine," Mauchly received many awards, including the Howard N.

Potts Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Scott Award and the Goode Medal of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies. Mauchly started two of his own companies, one of which merged with Sperry Corporation. Born in Cincinnati, Mauchly died Tuesday while undergoing heart surgery. -SUEGOLDFARB The co-inventor of UNIVAC, the computer that writes business letters and figures the odds of chess games and poker hands, has died in Ambler, Pa. John W.

Mauchly was 72. Mauchly first became involved with computers when he was working on a weather analysis project, one of his favorite pastimes. He decided a high-speed computer would help his research progress and began experimenting with electronic equipment he purchased himself. By 1942 the physicist had finished a proposal describing ENIAC, the Electronic Numeral Integrator and Computer. The Army awarded him a contract and he completed it in 1946.

UNIVAC, the Universal Automatic Computer, was the improved version of ENIAC. During the Apollo 17 moonwatch in 1972 Mauchly and the co-inventor of ENIAC and UNIVAC, J. Presper Eck-ert went to Florida but were late getting to space headquarters because of traffic. Mauchly later referred to the event as a "strange contrast between science ani humanity." On that same trip, the two men Paccinnc White One of Gordon Chase, 47, White House adviser to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.

Johnson who specialized in national security affairs. Most recently he had been a management consultant and lecturer at Harvard where he was named a tenured professor even though he didn't have a master's degree. In Weston, Mass. as the result of a car accident. Dov Joseph, 80, who first came to Palestine in 1918 to join David Ben-Gurion and helped plant the roots for what was to become the state of Israel.

A native of Canada, Joseph was governor of Jerusalem during the 1948 Middle East war that accompanied the birth of Israel. In Jerusalem. Kenneth Burnett, 78, a leader in Canada's chemical industry probably best known for the development of luminous paints. Near the end of World War II he invented a glowing marker that downed pilots could throw on the water to attract rescue planes. He later applied that technique to paints.

In Toronto. Winifred Hughes Braun, 93, widow of Carl F. Braun who founded one of the state's biggest engineering and construction firms. A philanthropist who was active in the Red Cross and Pasadena Opera Guild, she helped oversee a trust that has donated millions of dollars to Caltech and other universities. In Pasadena.

Iva Dee Hiatt, 60, called the "presiding genius of choral music" at Smith College in Massachusetts where she was director emeritus. For 31 years she and her singers toured Europe, the Middle East and South America, performing at some of the world's best-known music festivals. In Northampton, Mass. of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). Vincent J.

Manno, 67, whose many Max Holtzem was a young German army flier when he stood before this Pfalz single -wing craft, probably just prior to World War I. Photo was always one of his favorites, and he signed it for friends. He Spanned Decades From Flight to Moon Landings 1 John W. Mauchly AP photo stayed in a hotel but got lost and couldn't find their rooms. Mauchly mused that the inventors of the computer couldn't figure out a simple House Security Adviser; Israel Founding Fathers transactions as a newspaper broker, included arranging the merger in 1966 of the New York Herald Tribune with the Journal American and World Telegram.

He helped establish the first mutual production plan for newspapers competing within the same city and helped draft the Newspaper Preservation Act passed bv Congress in 1970. In Boca Raton, Fla. of cancer. Charles Curran, 58, director-general of the British Broadcasting Corp. from 1969 to 1977.

He joined the BBC as a producer in 1947 and was its representative in Canada before returning to Britain. After retiring as the BBC's chief executive in 1978 he became managing director of Visnews, one of the world's largest television film news agencies. In London following a heart attack. Gerald M. Mayer, 74, an assistant to Allen W.

Dulles during World War II who helped the Office of Strategic Services penetrate German and Japanese communications. Born to American parents in Berlin and fluent in several languages, he worked for the National Broadcasting Co. before the war translating, among other documents, the speeches of Adolf Hitler. In Gstaad, Switzerland of undisclosed causes. Glenn Shaw, 67, for 25 years a Hollywood agent whose clients have included Fay Spain, Doug McClure, Jerry Mathers and Sue Lyon.

In Los Angeles after a brief illness. Marie Gordon, 35, one of the Mar-velettes who recorded "Please Mr. Postman" and "Beech wood 4-5789" for Barry Gordy's fledgling Motown Records Corp. in 1961. The two recordings were credited with establishing both the company and the Motown sound.

In Inkster, of lupus disease and sickle cell anemia. of suits and countersuits that left Fox penniless. Before coming to the United States in 1939, Koretz negotiated Lamarr's Hollywood contract after her scandalous European success in "Ecstasy," a 1933 Czechoslovakian film that showed her nude. He also convinced Shaw that "Pygmalion" had film possibilities (it was produced in 1938). Shaw was so taken with Koretz's negotiations that he dedicated the screenplay to him.

Koretz later worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as an adviser on acquiring rights to European properties. His vision may have been best expressed by Herbert Luft, a film critic and historian who revealed that Koretz had protected rebroadcast rights for films 20 years before television was developed. Dies; One of Last Global Explorers Special I Th Tim! The man Lowell Thomas credited with logging more miles by dog sled and discovering more Antarctic territory than any other American, died Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. Finn Ronne, veteran of nine expeditions to the Ultimate South, was 80 and had just published his fourth book. Ronne, son of one of the members of the first South Pole expedition in 1911, was a retired Navy captain who first went with Adm.

Richard E. Byrd to Antarctica in 1933-35 as dog-driver and radio operator. In the ensuing years he was to make eight more journeys there, one of which in 1946 he financed himself. On that trip he and the 22 other members of his party lived ashore for an entire year and explored an area more than twice the size of Texas. He had sailed a 183-foot wooden ship beyond Cape Horn, letting it freeze into the ice.

While there he became the first U.S. postmaster in the Antarctic and was responsible for charting and mapping the last unknown coastline in the world. The entire trip cost only $50,000 and because of costs, probably was the last private Antarctic journey that ever will be made. When the International Geophysical Year was organized in 1956, Ronne was chosen to head America's station at the head of the Weddell Sea where he spent yet another winter on the continent. He returned again over the next decade, sometimes with American expeditions, once with the Argentine navy.

Ronne, who retired from the Navy in 1946, also made four journeys to the Arctic, exploring vast areas of Greenland. He had spent the last 10 years lecturing on the same circuit with Lowell Thomas and the other few remaining global explorers. Biographer Also Served as Valet Author of Two Books on Noel Coward Dies Special Ttw Timet Noel Coward's valet-turned-biographer, Cole Lesley, has died in Sir Noel's Switzerland home at age 70. Lesley was neither an experienced cook nor a valet when he went to work for Coward in 1936. A star-struck youth, he talked his way into the position to be closer to Coward and the exciting lifestyle the composer-actor-playwright offered.

As their relationship developed, Lesley took on the position of Coward's secretary. In 1977 he wrote "Remembered Laughter, the Life of Noel Coward," and last year, with Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley, Lesley coauthored another Coward biography, "Noel Coward and Friends." According to Jean Howard, of Los Angeles, a personal friend of both Coward and Lesley, Lesley was born Lesley Cole. As a servant, Coward addressed him as Cole. Later, when he became Coward's secretary, Coward decided it was more fitting to call him by his first name, but couldn't change his old habit. He suggested Lesley change his name to Cole Lesley, which he did.

Howard said she thought the scheme may have been "more to irritate Cole Porter, another personal friend, than anything else." Lesley, whose Jan. 4 death was revealed Thursday, had been scheduled to visit USC Feb. 24 to take part in a tribute to Coward. Coward's 1973 will named Lesley as a chief beneficiary. Jack Thum AP photo Sarah Selby Directors Knew Her Even if Public Didn't The voice and the face were familiar to the public from radio, television and movies, but her name was not widely known because she was not a big star.

She was known, though, by casting directors who needed a reliable and accomplished character actress to play the role of the attractive mother or the kindly aunt. Her stage name was Sarah Selby. Her full name was Sarah Selby Harthern. She died last Monday in her Los Angeles home after a long battle with cancer. She was 74.

A native of St. Louis, and a graduate of Washington University there, she studied acting under the late great drama teacher Maria Ous-penskaya in the late 1920s. In 1933, she moved to San Diego to join the company of the Old Globe Theatre. In the mid-30s, Miss Selby began working in radio. Among other shows she played character roles on "Amos and Andy," "Junior Miss," "Lux Radio Theater" and "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show." In television, she had a recurring role as Ma Smalley on "Gunsmoke," played Aunt Gertrude in "The Hardy Boys," and appeared in a number of other series, including "My Three Sons," "Father Knows Best," "Family Affair," "Dragnet" and "Rhoda." She appeared, too, in many movies, among them "Battle Cry," "Jim Thorpe-All American," "An Affair to Remember" and "Beyond the Forest." And in one unique movie role, she did not appear at all she was the voice of the mother elephant in Walt Disney's "Dumbo." -JERRY BELCHER LAWYER HELPED BRING BOTH SOUND AND SHAW TO FILMS Holtzem in 1979.

Times photo than flew, a factor he later credited with "saving me from serious disast-er. His interests lured him to a flight group in 1913 and later into battle when World War I started in 1914. He later became a test pilot at the Pfalz aircraft factory and at war's end was with the famed "Red Baron" group of Manfred von Richthofen. (Von Richthofen developed the concept of planes fighting as a group rather than individually and his red-painted planes dominated the air over France through much of the war.) The armistice in 1918 prevented Germany from building planes and Holtzem went to Argentina where he became an exhibition flyer. In 1928 Anthony Fokker summoned Holtzem to New Jersey to become his personal test pilot for the large flying boats he was then starting to build.

But by 1932 Fokker decided to return to Holland and sold his firm, which became a predecessor of North American Aviation Corp. (now Rockwell International). Holtzem remained with the firm as an inspection chief, eventually helping to turn out the 15,000 P-51s North American built during World War II. He retired in 1957 and had lived quietly since. Holtzem died Jan.

5. BURT A. FOLKART An aviation pioneer whose lifespan stretched from before the first airplane flight to a decade beyond a manned moon landing has died in Torrance Memorial Hospital. Max Holtzem was 87 and had livedi in Manhattan Beach since 1955. One of the last survivors of "The1 Early Birds," a group of men who so-' loed before Dec.

17, 1916, (the 13th. anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight), Holtzem flew for the Germans in World War I and tested the P-51 Mustang for the United States in World War II. In the interim he was a stunt pilot in Argentina who was credited with being the first pilot to effect the transfer of an acrobat from a plane to an automobile while both vehicles were speeding around a track. An unaffected man who, according to his neighbors, would rather discuss flying than worry over his diminishing finances, Holtzem in 1911 began hanging around a field in his native Koln, Germany. There, he recalled in a 1979 interview with The Times, two men were putting together a monoplane with a three-cylinder engine.

Neither was successful, he recalled, but Holtzem, an architecture student, learned by their mistakes and developed a craft that "hopped," rather 1 of 4 Original Pennsylvanians Frwn Tirrwi Wlr Sorvkot EAST STROUDSBURG, R. (Poley) McClintock, who was a drummer with Fred Waring when Waring decided to form the Pennsylvanians, is dead at the age of 79. McClintock, who toured with the choral-instrumental group for almost 60 years, was 16 and played the drums in a group Waring called "Banjazzatra." There were four of them, all in their teens, and they formed the nucleus of the group that in 1921 became the famed Pennsylvanians. Over the years McClintock, who died Wednesday night, was featured on radio, television and records as both drummer and a "frog-voiced" comedian. His death makes Waring, now 79, the only surviving member of the original unit.

Clown Often Frwn Ttnwt Wirt Sarvkat CHICAGO A clown, who once estimated that he had made more than 2,000 hospital visits to entertain sick children and who also raised 37 children in his own home, has died here of cancer. Jack Thum was 54 when he died in his sleep after a two-year battle with the disease. Thum was an orphan who for 23 years played the clown at benefits, club meetings and at hospitals. As a kid I spent 17 years alone," he once said during an interview. "No one came to visit.

No one made me laugh. I decided then that I would make laughter my life's work. Thum had been told in 1978 that he was dying of lung cancer but he said he was determined to keep on wearing his funny hat with fake fruit on the top, a red nose and oversize shoes. One of the reasons he needed the work, he said at the time, was so he Said That He'd Die Smiling The European copyright attorney who helped bring an early device for sound motion pictures to Hollywood and later arranged a contract for Hedy Lamarr and a screenplay sale for George Bernard Shaw has died in Los Angeles. Paul Koretz was 94 and since the demise of the giant film studios had lived in relative obscurity.

According to Harry M. Geduld's book, "The Birth of the Talkies," three inventors in 1921 had perfected a device that produced talking films. It was a true sound on film system (as opposed to separate disc or gramophone recordings) and featured a flywheel sprocket device that provided the best synchronization then available. Koretz persuaded William Fox, whose Fox studios were merged with 20th Century in 1935, to acquire the Western Hemisphere rights to this "Tri-ergon" work of for $10,000 (or $60,000 depending on the source). Fox did, but the resultant legal battle as to who really owned the rights to sound pictures resulted in a series Operated Store for 55 Years Retailer Harry L.

Markowitz, who with his brother Jack for 55 years operated Marbro's, a clothing store in Santa Monica and Venice, has died. A World War I veteran, he was 84 and active in numerous civic and Jewish organizations, including founding member and past president of Temple Beth Shalom, a founder of the Jewish Community Council and Bay Cities Jewish Community Center and past chairman of the United Jewish Welfare Fund. He died Jan. 5. He Created Disasters for Films That Proved Popular at Box Office and his wife, Shirlee, could continue to keep children from broken homes in their own modest residence.

Mayor Jane Byrne declared last Halloween "Jack Thum Day" throughout Chicago. But Thum was in the hospital, unable to work because of bones made brittle by constant treatments. He wanted to make one last appearance, however, and was wheeled into an auditorium where 400 children had been invited for what was to prove his final party. His wife said that he was smiling when she saw him for the last time Wednesday. "Before I left (the hospital) I managed to wake him up.

on, try to give me a she told him. "He gave me a big smile and dropped off to sleep again. "He had always said he would go out smiling. And he did." His imagination cracked open a San Francisco street and turned "man's architecture into an instant cemetery." But his destructive vision went no further than the movie set of "San Francisco," the first of the so-called catastrophe films. John Ivan Hoffman, 75, was responsible for the unprecedented earthquake effects in the 1936 movie starring Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald.

Using miniatures and montages, he turned what was initially a "flat, impersonal" earthquake scene into a tremor which left San Francisco in shambles. Originally from Hungary, Hoffman, who died Jan. 6, immigrated to the United States in 1925. He spent several years working between First National, Paramount and Universal stu dios before he became head of the montage department for MGM. Together with Slavko Vorkapich, Hoffman specialized in writing, directing and editing special sequences, similar to those of 'San Francisco." He also contributed to such films as "Secrets," "Boom Town," "The Great Ziegfield," "Cover Girl," "A Song to Remember," "One Night of Love," and "Lord Love a Duck." In 1952, he edited the first 3-D film, "Bwana Devil." Though panned by the critics, the movie nevertheless represented a rudimentary advance in the use of stereoscopic photography in motion pictures.

Summing up his work, Hoffman once remarked, "A catastrophe is no small task." -M. MEGAN MCCASLIN.