Of possible interest to UCSD Pascal fans...
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>From Kelly Briggs (kbriggs_at_soe.ucsd.edu)
Subject: UCSD Pascal Reunion Symposium 10/22
Dozens of alumni will gather at UCSD on Friday, Oct. 22, to mark the 30th
anniversary of the computer language UCSD Pascal, one of the first
languages of the personal-computer era. The UCSD Pascal Reunion Symposium
will take place from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Price Center Ballroom, and
will be open to the public, free of charge. (To register, go to
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/Pascal/registration.sfe.)
The UCSD Pascal symposium is organized by UCSD?s Jacobs School of
Engineering and its Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department, and
is co-sponsored by the California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology. The event will feature talks by several former
researchers on the project, including UCSD Pascal?s founding father,
professor emeritus Kenneth Bowles, who will speculate on "Pascal: What If?".
Other speakers include Richard Kaufmann, class of ?78, now a distinguished
technologist at Hewlett-Packard, who will reminisce on "What the Heck Was
UCSD Pascal?;" Roger Sumner, ?77, president of Beach Software Designs, who
will discuss Pascal?s far-reaching impact; and CSE professor Henrik Wann
Jensen, on ?Digital Illumination.?
Following those presentations, CSE professor Stefan Savage will moderate a
roundtable discussion among Kaufmann, Sumner and four other members of
Bowles? early research team: Mark Overgaard, '78, President, Pigeon Point
Systems; John Van Zandt, '76 '79 '86, President, CEO Consultancy, Inc.;
Keith Shillington, '78, Co-Owner, E Street Caf?, Encinitas, California; and
Lucia Yandell, '78 '80, JSF SW Process Lead, Northrop Grumman, ST Radio
Systems.
UCSD Pascal became both a programming language and an operating system for
some of the earliest personal computers. Its development not only put
computer science at UCSD on the map in a big way, but its innovations also
had a major impact on developers of other languages and operating systems at
Apple, Microsoft, and elsewhere.
Pascal was originally created by Swiss scientist Niklaus Wirth in 1969 for
use on mainframe computers. But starting in 1974, Bowles ? who at the time
directed UCSD?s computing center ? began to adapt Pascal for use on
so-called "microcomputers," precursors of today?s PCs. At one point or
another, more than 70 students were involved in the UCSD Pascal project, and
by 1983, UCSD Pascal had become an ISO standard language. The University of
California then sold the technology to SofTech Systems, which tried but
failed to convince IBM to adopt UCSD Pascal as the core operating system of
its first personal computers. (Microsoft's MS-DOS won the IBM contract.)
For a history of the UCSD Pascal program, including recollections from many
of the speakers who will attend the symposium, read ?UCSD Pascal and the PC
Revolution,? by Christine Foster, in the September 2004 issue of _at_UCSD. It
is available online at
http://www.alumni.ucsd.edu/magazine/vol1no3/features/pascal.htm . For the
complete program, go to
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/Pascal/ .
We hope to see you there!
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Received on Mon Oct 11 2004 - 16:18:40 BST