Charles Irby

I joined the CRL effort in June of 1965 as a computer operator for the summer, between my sophomore and junior years at UCSB. I worked the very-early morning shift (4:00 to 8:00 am), backing up the RW 400 and IBM 620 systems to tape and supporting the East Coast users (the first telecommuters?). I also helped out during the day and learned how to program the RW 400. In September of that year, Glen announced the decision to rewrite the system for the (then new) IBM 360 computer we were about to get. I remember he was not very happy about the decision to use the IBM, but IBM practically gave UCSB the computer in order to get us to do the project on their hardware (rather than CDC or Burroughs).

Glen was passing out initial assignments for the project, so I boldly stepped forward and asserted that I could program part of the system. Although Glen was obviously skeptical, he agreed to give me a chance. I guess I was too young (20) to know how exposed I was at that moment.

Shortly after the project got started in earnest, Glen became very ill with hepatitis and eventually spent over a year recovering. During that time he ran the project from his sickbed, with our small team of programmers making weekly pilgrimages to his hospital room for status reports and direction. After a few such meetings it was clear that the things he had thought up for me to do, I was already doing or had completed. So, he just turned the section I was working on over to me. I helped recruit Jim McGill, Dale Taylor, and John Pickens to help program the scalar and vector operators (the application layers) and we completed the project pretty much as planned. Ron Stoughton, Ed Faeh, Mike McCammon, Curt Lemon, and Helen Smith did the systems work and interfaced with IBM's MFT-II operating system. Dave Retz did the text editor. I then added the matrix level as my master's thesis project. As far as I know, this was the first "timesharing" system ever written for the IBM 360 hardware.

I was very impressed by Glen's ability to manage such a complex project from his sick bed. I was also impressed by how he did not let problems stand in his way -- if we needed something made he would just go to the machine shop and make it! I was also impressed by how smart he was about algorithms and how many tablets he used up in a week!

In 1968 my wife and I moved from Santa Barbara to the SF Bay Area, where I eventually became the chief architect of Doug Engelbart's group at SRI (7 years) where we pioneered high performance hypertext/hypermedia systems (Like the WWWeb today), structured documents, networking, advanced display systems, and the very early use of microprocessors. Then in 1975 I moved on to Xerox PARC (7 years) where I led the design of the Xerox Star graphical user interface (electronic desktop, icons, windows, object-oriented programming, compound document, WYSIWYG editing, etc.) and helped bring client-server architecture, the Ethernet LAN, and laser printing to the marketplace. I was named a Xerox Principal Scientist in 1980 and led the research arm of the Office System Division for the next two years.

In 1982 I co-founded Metaphor with four other people from Xerox. I spent a total of 11 years at Metaphor as chief architect of the product line, Sr. VP of Development, Chief Technical Officer, and a member of the Board. I was also given a major award from the Human Factors Society for the development of the modern graphical user interface. I was the founding Director of the Unicode Consortium and the Software Industry Coalition. I then spent about 2 years at General Magic as EVP of Products, and am now an executive at Silicon Graphics.

Throughout my career I have often reflected on my three years with Glen and the immeasurable effect those years had on my later life and career. Glen is clearly one of the brightest people I have ever met and deserves our unending admiration and respect.

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