Browsing by Subject "Computer software industry -- History."
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Item Oral history interview with Carl Machover(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-06-20) Machover, Carl.Carl Machover is computer graphics pioneer and president of Machover Associates Corporation (MAC), a computer graphics consultancy founded in 1976. MAC provides a broad range of management, engineering, marketing, and financial services to computer graphics users, suppliers, and investors worldwide. In this oral history Machover describes his upbringing in Iowa and training in the Eddy radar and radio program and other Navy service schools in Mississippi and Texas. He also provides details of his education under the G.I. Bill at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Machover notes his employment at Norden Laboratories Corporation in White Plains, NY, and his publication of the primer Basics of Gyroscopes (1960), intended initially for the Norden sales force. He then describes his move to Skiatron Electronics & Television Corporation where he helped form a subcontractor RMS Associates to build and market CRT character generators. RMS later changed its name to Information Displays, Inc. (IDI) and created the stand-alone computer-aided design (CAD) platform the IDIIOM (IDI Input-Output Machine). IDIIOM had its own operating system based on the Varian 620-I computer, a DEC PDP competitor. Machover also comments on TV scan versus vector scan, the relative merits of color and 3D information displays, potential health problems related to flickering display and jitter, interaction with the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S. (Radically Emphatic Students Interested in Science, Technology, and Other Research Subjects), and the adoption of CAD/CAM (Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Manufacturing) and a SIGGRAPH 'CORE' graphics standard in the 1970s.Item Oral history interview with Charles Antony Richard Hoare(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-07-17) Hoare, C. A. R. (Charles Antony Richard), 1934-Sir Antony Hoare is Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England, and Research/Professor Emeritus at the University of Oxford. Hoare is the recipient of the A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages. He has also been awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for pioneering and fundamental contributions to software science. In this oral history Hoare recounts his personal involvement in the development of academic computing science and education at The Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, and at the University of Oxford. He discusses his long-time interest in building bridges between university computing science departments and industry. Hoare also details his current work at Microsoft Research in applying assertions and other scientific techniques and theory to industrial operations. He discusses his advocacy of assertions in the maintenance and transformation of legacy code. Hoare also comments on a number of other subjects, including machine translation of languages, artificial intelligence, reasoning under uncertainty, software design and reliability, and project management. The interview includes a discussion of the problem of the preservation and interpretation of code.Item Oral history interview with Gary Durbin(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-05-03) Durbin, GaryGary Durbin is a software pioneer and entrepreneur with over thirty-five years of experience. He began his career specializing in operating systems and database systems. His first company, started in 1970, developed operating system improvements for IBM machines. That company introduced Secure, an early software security product. Secure was sold to Boole & Babbage in 1978. Durbin then founded Tesseract Corporation, a human resources software company that introduced the Time Relational Database. Tesseract was sold to Ceridian in 1993. Durbin founded Seeker Software in 1996, which was acquired by Web application company Concur Technologies in 1999. In this oral history Durbin recounts his education at the University of California at Berkeley and early Wells Fargo jobs programming the IBM 650, 1400, and 360 mainframes for online branch banking. He describes his activity in the consulting firm Cybernetic Systems Incorporated, his sole proprietorship of the Institute for Cybernetic Development, and the founding and financing of Tesseract. He also notes his role in the founding of parallel processing software firm Primrose Software and in marketing the Web application system Seeker. Durbin explains the core characteristics of good programming, software engineering, and management. He describes his work in developing network and relational database management systems, and the hegemony of the hierarchical IBM database system IMS (Information Management System). Durbin also explains the importance of integrity in a business prone to marketing vaporware, the impact of IBM's unbundling decision, and the recruiting and retention of women by software firms. He notes the role of the software industry in jobs creation and in endorsing the Black/Scholes options pricing model. Durbin also relates the importance of user groups like ADAPSO to the development of the independent software industry, including ADAPSO’s financial accounting committee and the special interest group Software Industry Association (SIA). This oral history was co-sponsored by CBI, through a National Science Foundation grant project, "Building a Future for Software History," and the Software History Center in conjunction with the Center's ADAPSO reunion (3 May 2002).Item Oral History Interview with Jim Gray(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-01-03) Gray, Jim, 1944-Gray discusses his childhood in Rome and education at the University of California, Berkeley. He explains the influence of Sputnik, Norbert Wiener’s view of cybernetics and society, the social impact of computing, and the artificial intelligence papers of Newell and Simon in the shaping of his career. Gray describes his co-op position at General Dynamics, as well as positions with Bell Labs (Murray Hill) and IBM Research in Yorktown Heights and San Jose. Gray also describes his evaluations of computer models stimulated by the system dynamics approach pioneered by Jay Forrester, his brief role as a UNESCO technical expert in Romania, and his introduction to relational database design. The interview includes comments on computer privacy and research laboratory culture at International Business Machines, Tandem Computers, and Microsoft.Item Oral history interview with John Landry(Charles Babbage Institute, 2004-05-07) Landry, JohnJohn Landry’s experience in the computer software industry spans a wide range of computer applications, designed and developed while working for a number of prominent independent software companies. He was the technical leader at McCormack & Dodge in architecting their accounting system and at a later point in designing and building Millenium which was a significant advance in constructing online applications systems. After M&D was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet, Landry and Bob Weiler joined Distribution Management System and developed an expert system which could be incorporated into commercial applications. Landry then sold the company to Cullinet, and he tells how he got Cullinet to invest in building client/server systems. He talks about convincing the Cullinet Board to sell the company to Computer Associates, somewhat over John Cullinane’s objections. Landry then describes going back to work at Dun & Bradstreet and later joining Lotus Development. He was instrumental in supporting Ray Ozzie in building Lotus Notes and in the sale of Lotus to IBM. He concludes by discussing his consulting work for IBM and specifically as an advisor to Lou Gerstner and becoming an investor in a series of new technology companies.Item Oral history interview with John Maguire(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-05-03) Maguire, John N. (John Norris), 1930-John Norris Maguire is former founder and President of Software AG of North America, Inc., overseas distributor of the Adabas system. Adabas (from “adaptable database”) is a commercial relational database management system (DBMS) originally developed by Software AG in the late 1960s. The database system was first developed for IBM 360 computers. In this oral history Maguire recounts his early life and decision to go into the Navy as an electrician's apprentice. He then discusses his education in electrical engineering at the University of Rhode Island and in business at MIT's Sloan School--where he studied industrial dynamics with Jay Forrester. Upon graduation Maguire joined Lockheed Missiles and Space Company where he worked on software simulation problems between 1960 and 1966. He recounts his service at CACI on software products including Quick Query, and his decision to found Software AG of North America in 1972. The bulk of the interview relates the marketing of Adabas, sales strategies against IBM, pricing decisions, cash flow issues related to the business, and the role of ADAPSO. This oral history was sponsored by the Software History Center in conjunction with the Center's ADAPSO reunion (3 May 2002).Item Oral history interview with Laszlo A. Belady(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-11-21) Belady, L. A. (Laszlo A.), 1928-Belady discusses his early life and education in Hungary, escape to West Germany during the 1956 revolution, and work as a draftsman at Ford Motor Company in Cologne and as an aerodynamics engineer at Dassault in Paris. Belady covers his 1961 immigration into the United States, where he joined International Business Machines and did early work in operating systems, virtual machine architectures, program behavior modeling, memory management, computer graphics, Asian character sets, and data security. He also discusses his tenure as Vice President and Program Director of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC); as Chairman, CTO, and CEO of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (MERL); and as Executive Director of the Austin Software Council.Item Oral history interview with Peter Watson(Charles Babbage Institute, 2002-07-17) Watson, Peter, 1947-Peter Watson is founder of Berkeley Computer Services Limited (BCS), one of the oldest continuously operating software houses in Scotland. The company was established in 1978, and is based in Glasgow. BCS’s first customer was Kangolwear. The company moved into healthcare solutions in the 1980s. In 1991 the company launched the integrated software package Masterlab, first implemented at Neville Hall Hospital in Abergavenny, Wales. In 2002 BCS was one of the largest providers of laboratory information systems in the United Kingdom, supplying its Masterlab integrated software package to approximately 40 National Health Service Trusts. The company has recently been acquired by Torex Laboratory Systems Ltd. In this oral history Watson describes his early life and education, his work as an actuary for Standard Life Assurance, and as a programmer at Honeywell Controls. He describes his role in the development and troubleshooting of several innovative programs and systems. Watson also recounts early efforts to establish financing and a customer base for BCS, including the development of complete information systems for textile manufacturing, whiskey distillery, building contracting, and many other business sectors. He also discusses many of the unique aspects of Scotland’s software industry.Item Oral history interview with Seymour Rubenstein(Charles Babbage Institute, 2004-05-07) Rubenstein, SeymourSeymour Rubinstein, a pioneer in PC word processing software, describes his personal background, his initial exposure to computers and his first programming projects. He tells of his IMSAI experiences and then of starting MicroPro International which produced the first blockbuster application software product, WordStar, which ran under the CP/M operating system. He discusses in detail the problems that later occurred at MicroPro leading to WordStar losing its premier position and eventually to the company being sold. He talks about his belief that word processing was the principal application which really triggered the explosive growth of the PC market.