Robert William Taylor Biography

Robert William Taylor is best known for initially conceiving, and then directing, the development of ARPAnet in the 1960s. Taylor was also involved in fostering many new technologies that eventually became widely accepted essentials of computer and communication systems.

ARPAnet, the acronym for Advanced Research Projects Agency network, was the "supernetwork" of defense research networks that eventually evolved into the Internet. While working as the director of the Information Processing Techniques Office at the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Taylor saw enthusiastic users crowd around each group of interactive terminals that were connected to three separate computer systems. Taylor felt that the projects he was overseeing could be more efficient if these three isolated systems would merge. He therefore proposed the creation of ARPAnet.

ARPAnet covered a fairly large geographical area that eventually consisted of about 60,000 computer systems. The original ARPAnet--the first computer network--was established in 1969 for the free interchange of information between universities and research organizations, and for communications amongst the United States military. Although ARPAnet began as a slow, academically oriented computer network, over a fifteen-year period of time it turned into today's powerful Internet.

During his tenure at ARPA, Taylor organized the funding of new and ongoing research on fundamental computing technologies, such as time-sharing, networking, computer graphics, pointing devices (i.e., mouse), teleconferencing, and artificial intelligence. With J. C. R. Licklider, Taylor co-authored the original 1968 paper The Computer as a Communications Device, which was one of the first published articles to communicate the value of networks.

In 1970, after leaving ARPA, Taylor founded the Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC). CSL was the birthplace for the Ethernet (the first local-area network, or LAN) and for PARC Universal Packet protocol (PUP, the first "internetwork" technology that was needed to convert the limited ARPAnet into the more comprehensive Internet). Graphical-user interfaces (GUIs) developed under Taylor's leadership led to operating systems such as the Macintosh and Windows operating systems. Other inventions that were overseen by Taylor were laser printing and WYSIWYG (acronym for What You See Is What You Get) word processing.

In 1984 Taylor moved to Digital Equipment Corporation and founded the now-famous Systems Research Center (SRC), which he managed until his retirement in 1996. Under Taylor's guidance, SRC's numerous accomplishments were the first multiprocessor workstation, the first fault-tolerant switched local-area network (LAN), and the first electronic notebook.

Taylor assembled innovative teams of talented researchers and motivated them to accomplish ambitious technological projects. Early in his career, Taylor saw the potential of the computer when, as a research manager at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, he arranged financing for Douglas C. Engelbart, a young researcher at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), for his work inventing the computer mouse. From the research laboratories that Taylor created and staffed numerous people went on to become founders and leaders of computer companies. Some of these people included Bob Metcalfe of 3Com; John Warnock and Chuck Geschke of Adobe Systems; and Charles Simonyi of the Applications Division of Microsoft. In addition, the companies of Apple Computers, Silicon Graphics, Inc., Cisco Systems, Novell, and Sun Microsystems built successful businesses on the published and demonstrated work that originated from Taylor's research laboratories.

Butler Lampson, an architect at Microsoft Corporation and an adjunct professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said about Taylor, "When you write something on your WYSIWYG word processor, print it on your laser printer, store it on a file server, or e-mail it to a colleague, you're enjoying the fruits of Bob Taylor's research labs. Much of the growth of Silicon Valley has been tied to the Internet, workstations, and local area networks. All these technologies started in labs that were founded or sponsored by Taylor."

Robert William Taylor was one of four individuals awarded the 1999 National Medal of Technology™, the United States's highest technology award. At that time, Taylor was cited for "visionary leadership in the development of modern computing technology."

Recent Updates

February 24, 2004: Taylor was awarded the 2004 Charles Stark Draper Prize, presented by the National Academy of Engineering, "for the vision, conception, and development of the principles for, and their effective integration in, the world's first practical networked personal computers." He shared the prize with Alan C. Kay, Butler W. Lampson, and Charles P. Thacker. Source: National Academy of Engineering, www.nae.edu/awards, March 19, 2004.