Rebecca Thomas

StefanL, 01.11.02, 12:25

Technical writer and programmer

We fell in love with this woman in 1985. She's quite older than we are. Her book "A User Guide to the UNIX OS" was our first Unix Book in 1985 or 6. It was 3 years old and in a sale box even then. Before that buy we had read about Unix only in IBM sponsored magazines in the UB Wien. Unix got a somewhat ambivalent coverage there. In the 80ies she wrote her books mostly with one Jean L. Yates.

Here's a list with publishing year:

• A User Guide to the UNIX System, 82
• The Business Guide to the XENIX System, 84
• User Guide to the UNIX Systems (incl. BSD and System V), 84
• Advanced Programmer's Guide to UNIX System V, 85
• UNIX Administration Guide for System V, 88

She went on writing and programming throughout the 90ies. Her column "Wizard's Grabbag" in Unixworld has always been fun to read. I dunno what she does now, for that column ended in 2000. Shallow search has not helped yet.

Pics seem to be hard to get by but 1 will follow, when we scan the inside of her book. We're getting off of the stars. We would like to build a "Monument du progammeur inconnu". We think, she's still beautiful.

Her professional mission statement on networkcomputing.com's Unixworld goes like

• Unix Advocacy: Although Unix never ``made it'' on the desktop, IMHO, it's still the best darn operating system for getting things done. Of course, it's the OS of technical choice for most servers and database engines, in spite of the Microsoft NT juggernaut.
• Online Editing: I've been with UnixWorld magazine since it's inception almost 20 years ago. I'm still trying to keep the spirit alive.
• Web Programming: I've done all the programming for the UnixWorld Online site and most of the programming for the LAN Times site, our sister publication. I've started with server-side programming (CGI in Perl) and have ventured into writing Java applets and JavaScript for dynamic HTML pages.

As so often there are yet other interesting Rebecca Thomasses: inside.bard.edu: This one does Artificial intelligence, specifically multi-agent systems in Annandale-on-Hudson, upstate New York, we luves GOOGLE! plink, nix,    praise or blame!
 

Winners, slaves and looser coalitions

StefanL, 28.10.02, 09:06

   

Are these guys slaves? All 3 were keynote speakers at this year's Borland developers' conference. All 3 are among the best computing engineers on this planet, imho. They work for Intel, MS and Sun respectively. Are they slaves of evil empires? Come on, give me a hint!

  

Are these guys a looser coalition? Are they saints? Will they pull through? Can they compete?

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John Backus

StefanL, 28.10.02, 07:57

b. 1924, "inventor" of FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation), the first real high-level computer programming language and the most widely used programming language of physical science. If Grace Hopper is the mother of the compiler and languages, John Backus is their father. You might know the BNF Notation. (BNF is an application of Noam Chomsky's Generative Grammar Thing) Backus is the B in it.

yet another Backus: http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/marl/Backus/BackusHome.html

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Doug McIlroy

StefanL, 27.10.02, 16:56

Mathematician, engineer, programmer, manager of Bell Labs Fame. 2 of many things this guy worked on: Stream processing: Unix pipes, classic coroutine sieve making Unix manuals short and accurate

He's got a homepage at cm.bell-labs.com

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Chuck Peddle

StefanL, 27.10.02, 14:00

This man helped develop the MC6800 microprocessor chipset at Motorola and later, together with architect Bill Mensch, became the driving force behind first sub $100 CPU (the $25 6502) at MOS Technologies.

He was also the team leader in the design of the KIM-1 and Commodore PET Micro Computers.

Beside Peddle's own designs many good things came from the 6502: the Apple II, the VIC20, the BBC Micro, the C=64 and the NES that revived Video Gaming after its '83 crash.

The PET, Apple II and Tandy TRS-80 (with a Zilog Z80) were 3 preassembled micro-computers that all appeared in 1977 and really did change the game.

Steve Wozniak, who engineered the Apple I and II, in his autobio "iWoz" claims that, compared to Peddle's PET, the Apple II was a superior design.

Still, without the availabilitiy and price of the 6502 CPU the Apple I and II might have probably been based on a different processor that would not have lent itself to Wozniak's design style as easily. Wozniak & Jobs probably would have failed for many reasons with yet another Z80 machine. Woz also claims that Peddle himself was the person who had sold him samples of the CPU at the WestCon fair. Peddle says he sold them to Jobs. It seems Peddle had more of a competitive problem with Wozniak than with Jobs which, given their engineering roles, seems plausible. Any of those guys are welcome to their own nice memories.

We are not completely shure of all the claims: For sure a modern notebook with integrated display and storage is more similar to a PET and the average office PC is more like the Apple II. And no one should forget that all these guys worked in and with teams.

Now the Intel 8080 and the Motorola 6800 where announced at around $360 when bought individually. Of course Motorola's and Intel's large established customers could negotiate much lower bulk prices. But that would have meant nothing for a private person like Wozniak.

By pursuing the possibility of a 25$ CPU and leaving Motorola, Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch might be just the most important PANC (personal affordable networkable computer) pioneers ever.

The 6502 (along with the 6501) where ready for the market and shown at the Wescon tradshow in the fall of 1975. As Peddle was no bad marketeer and spokesperson they got quite extensive coverage in the trade press.

Peddle wanted every interested engineer and hobbyist to have access to the chips and documentation. Other semiconductor companies preferred to deal with "serious" customers only.

We'll write about the Z80 & CP/M one day. That would be about Mr. Faggin, Mr. Shima amd Mr. Kildall. Great pioneers by themselves. Surely in the same league as Mensch and Peddle.

Mr. Peddle believes that the worlds first microprocessors are not the famous Intel 4004 or 8008: "I am not trying to be negative about the guys that did it ... these are nothing more than calculator chips". He believes the worlds first real CPU is Tom Bennett's 8bit Motorola 6800 "... it's terrible that guy never got any credit."

The Victor 9000 was another interesting PC design by Chuck Peddle.

It seems to be true that of the guys that "invented" the microprocessor at Intel at least Marcian Hoff, Stan Mazor, Frederico Faggin and Masatoshi Shima are widely credited and Tom Bennett is not even mentioned in Wikipedia's 6800 entry. ComputerHistory.org though mentions him in its 1971 - Microprocessor Integrates CPU Function onto a Single Chip article.

Not true anymore, since Tom Bennett is now in the wikipedia article as the chief designer of the 6800. And no matter how you count, Intel's 8080 was available from April '74 and the 6800 from August of the same year. Never mind. Both were both expensive and still led to the Altair 8800 and silicon based memory was more of a hurdle than cpus. Still, Peddle, Mensch, Faggin and Shima would soon lower real micro-cpu prices by a factor of 5 or so, made them available to everybody and so forced the large companies to follow.

Now as a business person Mr. Peddle was not as sharp but still more apt than Mr. Wozniak. He could never achieve the kind of friendship with anybody (especially Jack Tramiel) compared to what Wozniak had with Jobs. He seems to have also been a bit of an idealist freak: At MOS technology he got them to finance 200 research projects with the money earned. But like Mensch he was no loser in business things either.

Check out his deeds and life via his wikipedia entry and on the Commodore history pages.

More than any other person, Chuck Peddle deserves to be called the founder of the personal computer industry. (Byte Magazine)

Steve Wozniak built his computer from parts available on the market, but Chuck Peddle built his machines starting with raw sand.(Brian Bagnall)

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