AP: UC alum Arnold Spielberg dies

The Associated Press reported on the death this week of University of Cincinnati alumnus and engineer Arnold Spielberg, father of Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg, 103, was a native of Cincinnati, where he began raising his four children before moving to New Jersey.

He served as a radio operator for the 490th Bomb Squadron during World War II. Stories of his war experiences would inspire his son's 1998 movie "Saving Private Ryan." After the war, he graduated from UC with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1949.

He co-oped at Crosley Corp.

Spielberg worked RCA and General Electric Co., helping to build one some of the most powerful mainframe computers of the 1950s. 

"I tried to get him interested in engineering," Spielberg told GE Reports of his famous son. "But his heart was in the movies."

Leah Posner Spielberg, Spielberg's ex-wife and mother of their four children, also grew up in Cincinnati and graduated from UC's College-Conservatory of Music. She died in 2017.