Lynn Conway, electricial engineer and computer scientist, co-architect of the VLSI design revolution, and transgender activist, was born #OTD in 1938.
She invented Dynamic Instruction Scheduling at IBM, but IBM fired her when they learned she was transitioning.
Photo: Lynn Conway
I was one of the 20-so students who took the very first VLSI-design-for-dummy-engineers course based on the just-issued Mead & Conway book. It was taught at Stanford by a researcher from Xerox PARC. Didn't know anything about them at the time; they were just two names on the book's cover...
@christineburns @mcnees @JohnLoader6
To be honest, the mouse and some of those other technologies had been invented a few years prior, by Doug Engelbart at SRI. PARC just produced the first usable computer based on them, the Alto.
(SRI was previously Stanford Research Institute, a for -profit research branch of Stanford University. Its connection was severed and it had its name reduced to an officially meaningless acronym after students protested for military research used in Vietnam.)
@JorgeStolfi If you really want to be a stickler, Bill English (RIP), who worked with Engelbart, invented the mouse.
I knew Doug personally, he was annoyed at having the mouse being misattributed as his invention, even if the mouse was used with NLS. Doug liked giving his colleagues attribution for their creations.
SRI also had cross licensing agreements with SAIL (Stanford AI Lab) not just Xerox PARC, they shared a lot collaboratively, intentionally.
@christineburns @mcnees @JohnLoader6
Robert McNees
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖
Jorge Stolfi
ex or current IDF unwelcome
グレェ「grey」