University of Utah ARPA
What was the name of the employer Robert Taylor (computer scientist) work for from 1969 to 1970?
Robert Taylor ( computer scientist ) Robert William Taylor ( February 10 , 1932 – April 13 , 2017 ) , known as Bob Taylor , was an American Internet pioneer , who led teams that made major contributions to the personal computer , and other related technologies . He was director of ARPAs Information Processing Techniques Office from 1965 through 1969 , founder and later manager of Xerox PARCs Computer Science Laboratory from 1970 through 1983 , and founder and manager of Digital Equipment Corporations Systems Research Center until 1996 . Uniquely , Taylor had no formal academic training or research experience in computer science ; Severo Ornstein likened Taylor to a concert pianist without fingers , a perception reaffirmed by historian Leslie Berlin : Taylor could hear a faint melody in the distance , but he could not play it himself . He knew whether to move up or down the scale to approximate the sound , he could recognize when a note was wrong , but he needed someone else to make the music . His awards include the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Draper Prize . Taylor was known for his high-level vision : The Internet is not about technology ; its about communication . The Internet connects people who have shared interests , ideas and needs , regardless of geography . Early life . Robert W . Taylor was born in Dallas , Texas , in 1932 . His adoptive father , Rev . Raymond Taylor , was a Methodist minister who held degrees from Southern Methodist University , the University of Texas at Austin and Yale Divinity School . The family ( including Taylors adoptive mother , Audrey ) was highly itinerant during Taylors childhood , moving from parish to parish . Having skipped several grades as a result of his enrollment in an experimental school , he began his higher education at Southern Methodist University at the age of 16 in 1948 ; while there , he was not a serious student but had a good time . Taylor then served a stint in the United States Naval Reserve during the Korean War ( 1952–1954 ) at Naval Air Station Dallas before returning to his studies at the University of Texas at Austin under the GI Bill . At UT he was a professional student , taking courses for pleasure . In 1957 , he earned an undergraduate degree in experimental psychology from the institution with minors in mathematics , philosophy , English and religion . He subsequently earned a masters degree in psychology from Texas in 1959 before electing not to pursue a PhD in the field . Reflecting his background in experimental psychology and mathematics , he completed research in neuroscience , psychoacoustics and the auditory nervous system as a graduate student . According to Taylor , I had a teaching assistantship in the department , and they were urging me to get a PhD , but to get a PhD in psychology in those days , maybe still today , you have to qualify and take courses in abnormal psychology , social psychology , clinical psychology , child psychology , none of which I was interested in . Those are all sort of in the softer regions of psychology . Theyre not very scientific , theyre not very rigorous . I was interested in physiological psychology , in psychoacoustics or the portion of psychology which deals with science , the nervous system , things that are more like applied physics and biology , really , than they are what normally people think of when they think of psychology . So I didnt want to waste time taking courses in those other areas and so I said Im not going to get a PhD . After leaving Texas , Taylor taught math and coached basketball for a year at Howey Academy , a co-ed prep school in Florida . I had a wonderful time but was very poor , with a second child — who turned out to be twins — on the way , he recalled . Taylor took engineering jobs with aircraft companies at better salaries . He helped to design the MGM-31 Pershing as a senior systems engineer for defense contractor Martin Marietta ( 1960–1961 ) in Orlando , Florida . In 1962 , after submitting a research proposal for a flight control simulation display , he was invited to join NASAs Office of Advanced Research and Technology as a program manager assigned to the manned flight control and display division . Computer career . Taylor worked for NASA in Washington , D.C . while the Kennedy administration was backing research and development projects such as the Apollo program for a manned moon landing . In late 1962 Taylor met J . C . R . Licklider , who was heading the new Information Processing Techniques Office ( IPTO ) of the Advanced Research Project Agency ( ARPA ) of the United States Department of Defense . Like Taylor , Licklider had specialized in psychoacoustics during his graduate studies . In March 1960 , he published Man-Computer Symbiosis , an article that envisioned new ways to use computers . This work was an influential roadmap in the history of the internet and the personal computer , and greatly influenced Taylor . During this period , Taylor also became acquainted with Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park , California . He directed NASA funding to Engelbarts studies of computer-display technology at SRI that led to the computer mouse . The public demonstration of a mouse-based user interface was later called the Mother of All Demos . At the Fall 1968 Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco , Engelbart , Bill English , Jeff Rulifson and the rest of the Human Augmentation Research Center team at SRI showed on a big screen how he could manipulate a computer remotely located in Menlo Park , while sitting on a San Francisco stage , using his mouse . ARPA . In 1965 , Taylor moved from NASA to IPTO , first as a deputy to Ivan Sutherland ( who returned to academia shortly thereafter ) to fund large programs in advanced research in computing at major universities and corporate research centers throughout the United States . Among the computer projects that ARPA supported was time-sharing , in which many users could work at terminals to share a single large computer . Users could work interactively instead of using punched cards or punched tape in a batch processing style . Taylors office in the Pentagon had a terminal connected to time-sharing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a terminal connected to the Berkeley Timesharing System at the University of California , Berkeley , and a third terminal to the System Development Corporation in Santa Monica , California . He noticed each system developed a community of users , but was isolated from the other communities . Taylor hoped to build a computer network to connect the ARPA-sponsored projects together , if nothing else , to let him communicate to all of them through one terminal . By June 1966 , Taylor had been named director of IPTO ; in this capacity , he shepherded the ARPANET project until 1969 . Taylor had convinced ARPA director Charles M . Herzfeld to fund a network project earlier in February 1966 , and Herzfeld transferred a million dollars from a ballistic missile defense program to Taylors budget . Taylor hired Larry Roberts from MIT Lincoln Laboratory to be its first program manager . Roberts first resisted moving to Washington DC , until Herzfeld reminded the director of Lincoln Laboratory that ARPA dominated its funding . Licklider continued to provide guidance , and Wesley A . Clark suggested the use of a dedicated computer , called the Interface Message Processor at each node of the network instead of centralized control . At the 1967 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles , a member of Donald Davies team ( Roger Scantlebury ) presented their research on packet switching and suggested it for use in the ARPANET . ARPA issued a request for quotation ( RFQ ) to build the system , which was awarded to Bolt , Beranek and Newman ( BBN ) . ATT Bell Labs and IBM Research were invited to join , but were not interested . At a pivotal meeting in 1967 most participants resisted testing the new network ; they thought it would slow down their research . In 1968 , Licklider and Taylor published The Computer as a Communication Device . The article laid out the future of what the Internet would eventually become . It began with a prophetic statement : In a few years , men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face . Beginning in 1967 , Taylor was sent by ARPA to investigate inconsistent reports coming from the Vietnam War . Only 35 years old , he was given an identification card with the military rank equivalent to his civilian position ( brigadier general ) , thus ensuring protection under the Geneva convention if he were captured . Over the course of several trips to the area , he established a computer center at the Military Assistance Command , Vietnam base in Saigon . In his words : After that the White House got a single report rather than several . That pleased them ; whether the data was any more correct or not , I dont know , but at least it was more consistent . The Vietnam project took him away from directing research , and by 1969 I knew ARPANET would work . So I wanted to leave . The election of Richard Nixon to the presidency and ongoing tensions with Roberts ( who , despite maintaining a putatively cordial relationship with Taylor , resented his lack of research experience and appointment to the IPTO directorship ) also factored in his decision to leave ARPA . For about a year , he joined Sutherland and David C . Evans at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City , where he had funded a center for research on computer graphics while at ARPA . Unable to acclimate to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-dominated milieu , Taylor moved to Palo Alto , California in 1970 to become associate manager of the Computer Science Laboratory ( CSL ) at Xerox Corporations new Palo Alto Research Center . Xerox . Although Taylor played an integral role in recruiting scientists for the laboratory from the ARPA network , physicist and Xerox PARC director George Pake felt that he was an unsuitable candidate to manage the group because he lacked a relevant doctorate and subsequent experience in academic research . While Taylor eschewed a Pake-proposed research program in computer graphics in favor of largely administering the day-to-day operations of the laboratory from its inception , he acquiesced to the appointment of BBN scientist and ARPA network acquaintance Jerome I . Elkind as titular CSL manager in 1971 . Technologies developed at PARC under Taylors aegis focused on reaching beyond ARPANET to develop what has become the Internet , and the systems that support todays personal computers . They included : - Powerful personal computers ( including the Xerox Alto and later D-machines ) with windowed displays and graphical user interfaces that inspired the Apple Lisa and Macintosh . The Computer Science Laboratory built the Alto , which was conceived by Butler Lampson and designed mostly by Charles P . Thacker , Edward M . McCreight , Bob Sproull and David Boggs . The Learning Research Group of PARCs Systems Science Laboratory ( led by Alan Kay ) added the software-based desktop metaphor . - Ethernet , which networks local computers within a building or campus ; and the first Internet , a network that connected the Ethernet to the ARPANET utilizing PUP ( PARC Universal Protocol ) , forerunner to TCP/IP . It was primarily designed by Robert Metcalfe , Boggs , Thacker and Lampson . - The electronics and software that led to the laser printer ( spearheaded by optical engineer Gary Starkweather , who transferred from Xeroxs Webster , New York laboratory to work with CSL ) and the Interpress page description language that allowed John Warnock and Chuck Geschke to found Adobe Systems . - What-you-see-is-what-you-get ( WYSIWYG ) word-processing programs , as exemplified by Bravo , which Charles Simonyi took to Microsoft to serve as the basis for Microsoft Word . - SuperPaint , a pioneering graphics program and framebuffer computer system developed by Richard Shoup . The software was written in consultation with future Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith , who could not secure an appointment at PARC and was retained as an independent contractor . Although Shoup received a special Emmy Award ( shared with Xerox ) in 1983 and an Academy Scientific Engineering Award ( shared with Smith and Thomas Porter ) in 1998 for his achievement , program development continued to be marginalized by PARC , ultimately precipitating Shoups departure in 1979 . Belying his lack of programming and engineering experience , Taylor was noted for his strident advocacy of Licklider-inspired distributed personal computing and his ability to maintain collegial and productive relationships between what was widely perceived as the foremost array of the epochs leading computer scientists . This was exemplified by a weekly staff meeting at PARC ( colloquially known as Dealer after Edward O . Thorps Beat the Dealer ) in which staff members would lead a discussion about myriad topics . They would sit in a circle of beanbag chairs and open debate was encouraged . According to Kay , the meeting was part of the larger ARPA community to learn how to argue to illuminate rather than merely to win . .. . The main purposes of Dealer -- as invented and implemented by Bob Taylor -- were to deal with how to make things work and make progress without having a formal manager structure . The presentations and argumentation were a small part of a deal session ( they did quite bother visiting Xeroids ) . It was quite rare for anything like a personal attack to happen ( because people for the most part came into PARC having been blessed by everyone there -- another Taylor rule -- and already knowing how to argue reasonably ) . Throughout his tenure at PARC , Taylor frequently clashed with Elkind ( who held budgetary responsibility for new projects but found his managerial authority undercut by Taylors intimate relationships with the research staff ) and Pake ( who did not countenance Taylors outsized influence in the laboratory and deprecatory attitude toward Xeroxs physics research program , then directly overseen by Pake ) ; as a result , he was not officially invited to the companys Futures Day demo ( marking the public premiere of the Alto ) in Boca Raton , Florida in 1977 . However , after one of Elkinds extended absences ( stemming from his ongoing involvement in other corporate and government projects ) , Taylor became the manager of the laboratory in early 1978 . In 1983 , physicist and integrated circuit specialist William J . Spencer became director of PARC . Spencer and Taylor disagreed about budget allocations for CSL ( exemplified by the ongoing institutional divide between computer science and physics ) and CSLs frustration with Xeroxs inability to recognize and use what they had developed . By the end of the year , Taylor and most of the researchers at CSL left Xerox . A coterie of leading computer scientists ( including Licklider , Donald Knuth and Dana Scott ) expressed their displeasure with Xeroxs decision not to retain Taylor in a letter-writing campaign to CEO David Kearns . DEC SRC . Taylor was hired by Ken Olsen of Digital Equipment Corporation , and formed the Systems Research Center in Palo Alto . Many of the former CSL researchers came to work at SRC . Among the projects at SRC were the Modula-3 programming language ; the snoopy cache , used in the Firefly multiprocessor workstation ; the first multi-threaded Unix system ; the first User Interface editor ; the AltaVista search engine and a networked Window System . Retirement and death . Taylor retired from DEC in 1996 . Following his divorce ( coinciding with his departure from Xerox ) , he lived in a secluded house in Woodside , California . In 2000 , he voiced two concerns about the future of the Internet : control and access . In his words : There are many worse ways of endangering a larger number of people on the Internet than on the highway . Its possible for people to generate networks that reproduce themselves and are very difficult or impossible to kill off . I want everyone to have the right to use it , but theres got to be some way to insure responsibility.Will it be freely available to everyone ? If not , it will be a big disappointment . On April 13 , 2017 , he died at his home in Woodside , California . His son said he had suffered from Parkinsons disease and other health problems . Awards . In 1984 , Taylor , Butler Lampson , and Charles P . Thacker received the ACM Software Systems Award for conceiving and guiding the development of the Xerox Alto System demonstrating that a distributed personal computer system can provide a desirable and practical alternative to time-sharing . In 1994 , all three were named ACM Fellows in recognition of the same work . In 1999 , Taylor received a National Medal of Technology and Innovation . The citation read For visionary leadership in the development of modern computing technology , including computer networks , the personal computer and the graphical user interface . In 2004 , the National Academy of Engineering awarded him along with Lampson , Thacker and Alan Kay their highest award , the Draper Prize . The citation reads : for the vision , conception , and development of the first practical networked personal computers . In 2013 , the Computer History Museum named him a Museum Fellow , for his leadership in the development of computer networking , online information and communications systems , and modern personal computing .