Oral history interview with Douglas T. Ross

Abstract

Ross begins with a discussion of his early involvement with John Ward on the Cape Cod project and his early experimentation in gestalt programming with Air Force and Emerson Electric Company programmers on the 1103 at Eglin Air Force Base. He then talks about the work he directed for the Air Force under Frank Reintjes at the MIT laboratories. He discusses the APT (Automatically Programmed Tools) and AED (Automated Engineering Design) projects which were early precursors of the languages and systems of modern CAD and CAM systems. Although these projects were not supported directly by DARPA, they were run in close connection with the WHIRLWIND, TX-0, TX-2, Project MAC, and CTSS projects that were running simultaneously at MIT. Ross discusses his use of programmers from industry in these projects. He also mentions the distribution of APT through the Fortran Monitor System and discusses the relationship between AED and PL-1.