View source for Biography:Robert Taylor (computer scientist)

{{short description|American computer scientist}}
{{Other people|Robert Taylor}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name        = Robert William Taylor
| native_name = 
| native_name_lang = 
| image       = Bob Taylor in 2008.jpg
| image_size  = 
| alt         = Bob Taylor
| caption     = Robert William Taylor in 2017
| birth_place = Dallas, {{wipe|Texas}}, {{wipe|United States}}
| death_date  = {{death date and age |2017|04|13|1932|02|10}}
| death_place = Woodside, {{wipe|California}}, United States
| resting_place =  America
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| other_names = 
| residence   = 
| citizenship = 
| nationality = 
| fields      = [[Computer science]]
| workplaces  = ARPA<br />Xerox PARC<br />[[Company:Digital Equipment Corporation|Digital Equipment Corporation]]
| patrons     = 
| alma_mater  = [[Organization:Southern Methodist University|Southern Methodist University]]<br />University of Texas
| thesis_title =        <!--(or  | thesis1_title =  and  | thesis2_title = )-->
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| known_for   = Internet pioneer<br />Computer networking & Communication systems<br />Modern personal computing
| author_abbrev_bot = 
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| influences  = 
| influenced  = 
| awards      = ACM Software Systems Award (1984)<br />[[Organization:Association for Computing Machinery|ACM]] Fellow (1994)<br />National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1999)<br />Charles Stark Draper Prize (2004) <br />Computer History Museum Fellow (2013) <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Robert,Taylor/|title=Hall of Fellows – Computer History Museum|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130515140833/http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Robert,Taylor/|archive-date=2013-05-15}}</ref>
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| children    = Derek Taylor<br />Erik Taylor<br />Kurt Taylor
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}}
'''Robert William Taylor''' (February 10, 1932&nbsp;– April 13, 2017), known as '''Bob Taylor''', was an American Internet pioneer, who led teams that made major contributions to the personal computer, and other related technologies. He was director of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office from 1965 through 1969, founder and later manager of [[Company:PARC|Xerox PARC]]'s Computer Science Laboratory from 1970 through 1983, and founder and manager of [[Company:Digital Equipment Corporation|Digital Equipment Corporation]]'s [[Organization:DEC Systems Research Center|Systems Research Center]] until 1996.<ref>{{cite book |title= A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet |author= John Naughton |date= October 5, 2000 |publisher= Phoenix |isbn= 978-0-7538-1093-4 }}</ref>

Uniquely, Taylor had no formal academic training or research experience in [[Computer science|computer science]]; [[Biography:Severo Ornstein|Severo Ornstein]] likened Taylor to a "concert pianist without fingers", a perception reaffirmed by historian Leslie Berlin: "Taylor could hear a faint melody in the distance, but he could not play it himself. He knew whether to move up or down the scale to approximate the sound, he could recognize when a note was wrong, but he needed someone else to make the music."<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t0k8DwAAQBAJ&q=pianist |title = Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age|isbn = 9781451651508|last1 = Berlin|first1 = Leslie|date = 2017-11-07| publisher=Simon and Schuster }}</ref>

His awards include the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Draper Prize.<ref name="almanac">{{cite news |title= Building the Internet: Bob Taylor won the National Medal of Technology "For visionary leadership in the development of modern computing technology" |date= October 11, 2000 |author= Marion Softky |work= The California Almanac |url= http://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2000/2000_10_11.taylor.html |access-date= March 30, 2011 }}</ref> Taylor was known for his high-level vision: "The Internet is not about technology; it's about communication. The Internet connects people who have shared interests, ideas and needs, regardless of geography."<ref name="almanac"/>

==Early life==
Robert W. Taylor was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1932.<ref name="texas">{{cite web |title= Internet and use of the computer as communication device the 1960s brainchild of psychology alum |author= Gary Susswein |date= September 14, 2009 |work= University of Texas Alumni profile |url= http://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/09/14/taylor_internet/ |access-date= March 30, 2011 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100720175751/http://www.utexas.edu/features/2009/09/14/taylor_internet/ |archive-date= July 20, 2010 }}</ref> His adoptive father, Rev. Raymond Taylor, was a Methodist minister who held degrees from [[Organization:Southern Methodist University|Southern Methodist University]], the [[Organization:University of Texas at Austin|University of Texas at Austin]] and [[Religion:Yale Divinity School|Yale Divinity School]]. The family (including Taylor's adoptive mother, Audrey) was highly itinerant during Taylor's childhood, moving from parish to parish. Having skipped several grades as a result of his enrollment in an experimental school, he began his higher education at Southern Methodist University at the age of 16 in 1948; while there, he was "not a serious student" but "had a good time."<ref name="computerhistory.org">http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Taylor_Robert/102702015.05.01.acc.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=March 2022}}</ref>

Taylor then served a stint in the United States Naval Reserve during the Korean War (1952–1954) at Naval Air Station Dallas before returning to his studies at the University of Texas at Austin under the GI Bill. At UT he was a "professional student," taking courses for pleasure. In 1957, he earned an undergraduate degree in [[Experimental psychology|experimental psychology]]<ref name="marquiswhoswho.com">{{cite web|url=http://search.marquiswhoswho.com/profile/100020542480|title=Marquis Biographies Online}}</ref> from the institution with minors in [[Mathematics|mathematics]], [[Philosophy:Philosophy|philosophy]], English and [[Religion:Religion|religion]].

He subsequently earned a master's degree in psychology from Texas in 1959<ref name="marquiswhoswho.com"/> before electing not to pursue a PhD in the field. Reflecting his background in experimental psychology and mathematics, he completed research in [[Biology:Neuroscience|neuroscience]], [[Physics:Psychoacoustics|psychoacoustics]] and the auditory [[Biology:Nervous system|nervous system]] as a graduate student. According to Taylor, "I had a teaching assistantship in the department, and they were urging me to get a PhD, but to get a PhD in psychology in those days, maybe still today, you have to qualify and take courses in [[Philosophy:Abnormal psychology|abnormal psychology]], [[Social:Social psychology|social psychology]], [[Social:Clinical psychology|clinical psychology]], child psychology, none of which I was interested in. Those are all sort of in the softer regions of psychology. They're not very scientific, they're not very rigorous. I was interested in physiological psychology, in psychoacoustics or the portion of psychology which deals with science, the nervous system, things that are more like [[Physics:Applied physics|applied physics]] and [[Biology:Biology|biology]], really, than they are what normally people think of when they think of psychology. So I didn't want to waste time taking courses in those other areas and so I said I'm not going to get a PhD."<ref name="computerhistory.org"/>

After leaving Texas, Taylor taught math and coached basketball for a year at Howey Academy, a co-ed prep school in Florida. "I had a wonderful time but was very poor, with a second child — who turned out to be twins — on the way," he recalled.

Taylor took engineering jobs with aircraft companies at better salaries. He helped to design the MGM-31 Pershing as a senior systems engineer for defense contractor Martin Marietta (1960–1961) in Orlando, Florida.

In 1962, after submitting a research proposal for a flight control simulation display, he was invited to join [[Organization:NASA|NASA]]'s Office of Advanced Research and Technology as a program manager assigned to the crewed flight control and display division.

==Computer career==
Taylor worked for NASA in [[Place:Washington, D.C.|Washington, D.C.]] while the Kennedy administration was backing research and development projects such as the [[Astronomy:Apollo program|Apollo program]] for a crewed moon landing. In late 1962 Taylor met [[Biography:J. C. R. Licklider|J. C. R. Licklider]], who was heading the new Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the  Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. Like Taylor, Licklider had specialized in psychoacoustics during his graduate studies. In March 1960, he published "Man-Computer Symbiosis," an article that envisioned new ways to use computers.<ref>{{cite journal |title= Man-Computer Symbiosis |author= J. C. R. Licklider |date= March 1960 |journal= IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics |pages= 4–11 |volume= HFE-1 |url= http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html |doi=10.1109/thfe2.1960.4503259}}</ref> This work was an influential roadmap in the history of the internet and the personal computer, and greatly influenced Taylor.<ref>Markoff, John, Innovator who helped create PC, Internet and mouse, New York Times, April 15, 2017, pA14</ref>

During this period, Taylor also became acquainted with [[Biography:Douglas Engelbart|Douglas Engelbart]] at the [[Organization:SRI International|Stanford Research Institute]] in Menlo Park, California. He directed NASA funding to Engelbart's studies of computer-display technology at SRI that led to the [[Computer mouse|computer mouse]]. The public demonstration of a mouse-based user interface was later called "[[The Mother of All Demos|the Mother of All Demos]]." At the Fall 1968 Joint Computer Conference in {{wipe|San Francisco}}, Engelbart, [[Biography:Bill English (computer engineer)|Bill English]], [[Biography:Jeff Rulifson|Jeff Rulifson]] and the rest of the Human [[Organization:Augmentation Research Center|Augmentation Research Center]]  team at SRI showed on a big screen how he could manipulate a computer remotely located in Menlo Park, while sitting on a San Francisco stage, using his mouse.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news |title= An Internet Pioneer Ponders the Next Revolution |date= December 20, 1999 |author= John Markoff |work= New York Times  |url= http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/122099outlook-bobb.html }}</ref>

===ARPA===
In 1965, Taylor moved from NASA to IPTO, first as a deputy to [[Biography:Ivan Sutherland|Ivan Sutherland]] (who returned to academia shortly thereafter) to fund large programs in advanced research in computing at major universities and corporate research centers throughout the United States. Among the computer projects that ARPA supported was [[Time-sharing|time-sharing]], in which many users could work at terminals to share a single large computer. Users could work interactively instead of using [[Engineering:Punched card|punched card]]s or [[Punched tape|punched tape]] in a [[Software:Batch processing|batch processing]] style. Taylor's office in the Pentagon had a terminal connected to time-sharing at [[Organization:Massachusetts Institute of Technology|Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], a terminal connected to the [[Software:Berkeley Timesharing System|Berkeley Timesharing System]] at the [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]], and a third terminal to the System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, California.  He noticed each system developed a community of users, but was isolated from the other communities.<ref name="nyt"/>

Taylor hoped to build a [[Computer network|computer network]] to connect the ARPA-sponsored projects together, if nothing else, to let him communicate to all of them through one terminal. By June 1966, Taylor had been named director of IPTO; in this capacity, he shepherded the [[Engineering:ARPANET|ARPANET]] project until 1969.<ref name = Wizards12>Lyon, Matthew; Hafner, Katie (1999-08-19). Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet (p. 12). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition "1965 to 1969"</ref> Taylor had convinced ARPA director Charles M. Herzfeld to fund a network project earlier in February 1966, and Herzfeld transferred a million dollars from a ballistic missile defense program to Taylor's budget.<ref>Markoff, John, Innovator who helped create PC, Internet and the mouse, New York Times, April 15, 2017, p.A1</ref>  Taylor hired Larry Roberts from [[Organization:MIT Lincoln Laboratory|MIT Lincoln Laboratory]] to be its first program manager. Roberts first resisted moving to Washington DC, until Herzfeld reminded the director of Lincoln Laboratory that ARPA dominated its funding.<ref name="babbage"/> Licklider continued to provide guidance, and [[Biography:Wesley A. Clark|Wesley A. Clark]] suggested the use of a dedicated computer, called the [[Interface Message Processor]] at each node of the network instead of centralized control. At the 1967 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, a member of Donald Davies' team (Roger Scantlebury) presented their research on [[Packet switching|packet switching]] and suggested it for use in the ARPANET.<ref name=Isaacson2014>{{cite book|last1=Isaacson|first1=Walter|title=The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution|date=2014|publisher=Simon & Schuster|isbn=9781476708690|page=237|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4V9koAEACAAJ&pg=PA237}}</ref><ref>{{citation|title=Birthing the Internet: Letters From the Delivery Room; Disputing a Claim|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/22/technology/l-birthing-the-internet-letters-from-the-delivery-room-disputing-a-claim-325210.html|newspaper=New York Times|date=November 22, 2001|author= Robert Taylor|quote=Authors who have interviewed dozens of Arpanet pioneers know very well that the Kleinrock-Roberts claims are not believed.}}</ref> ARPA issued a [[Finance:Request for quotation|request for quotation]] (RFQ) to build the system, which was awarded to [[Company:BBN Technologies|Bolt, Beranek and Newman]] (BBN). ATT Bell Labs and [[Organization:IBM Research|IBM Research]] were invited to join, but were not interested. At a pivotal meeting in 1967 most participants resisted testing the new network; they thought it would slow down their research.

In 1968, Licklider and Taylor published "The Computer as a Communication Device". The article laid out the future of what the Internet would eventually become.<ref name="com68">{{cite journal |title= The Computer as a Communication Device |author1= J. C. R. Licklider |author2= Robert Taylor |journal= Science and Technology<!--Not the Scientific & Academic Publishing journal--> |date= April 1968 |url= http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-computer-as-a-communication-device }}</ref> It began with a prophetic statement: "In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face."<ref name="com68"/>

Beginning in 1967, Taylor was sent by ARPA to investigate inconsistent reports coming from the Vietnam War. Only 35 years old, he was given an identification card with the military rank equivalent to his civilian position (brigadier general), thus ensuring protection under the Geneva convention if he were captured. Over the course of several trips to the area, he established a computer center at the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam base in Saigon. In his words: "After that the White House got a single report rather than several. That pleased them; whether the data was any more correct or not, I don't know, but at least it was more consistent."<ref name="babbage">{{cite web |title= Oral history interview with Robert William Taylor |date= 28 February 1989 |publisher= Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota |url= http://purl.umn.edu/107666 |access-date= April 1, 2011 }}</ref> The Vietnam project took him away from directing research, and "by 1969 I knew ARPANET would work. So I wanted to leave."<ref name="babbage"/>

The election of Richard Nixon to the presidency and ongoing tensions with Roberts (who, despite maintaining a putatively cordial relationship with Taylor, resented his lack of research experience and appointment to the IPTO directorship) also factored in his decision to leave ARPA. For about a year, he joined Sutherland and [[Biography:David C. Evans|David C. Evans]] at the [[Organization:University of Utah|University of Utah]] in Salt Lake City, where he had funded a center for research on computer graphics while at ARPA.

Unable to acclimate to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-dominated milieu, Taylor moved to Palo Alto, California in 1970 to become associate manager of the Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) at Xerox Corporation's new [[Company:PARC|Palo Alto Research Center]].

===Xerox===
Although Taylor played an integral role in recruiting scientists for the laboratory from the ARPA network, physicist and Xerox PARC director [[Biography:George Pake|George Pake]] felt that he was an unsuitable candidate to manage the group because he lacked a relevant doctorate and subsequent experience in academic research. While Taylor eschewed a Pake-proposed research program in computer graphics in favor of largely administering the day-to-day operations of the laboratory from its inception, he acquiesced to the appointment of BBN scientist and ARPA network acquaintance Jerome I. Elkind as titular CSL manager in 1971.<ref name="alto">{{cite journal |title= Personal Distributed Computing: The Alto and Ethernet Software |journal= ACM Conference on the History of Personal Workstations |location= Palo Alto |date= January 1986 |author= Butler Lampson |url= http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/blampson/38-AltoSoftware/WebPage.html }}</ref>

Technologies developed at PARC under Taylor's aegis focused on reaching beyond ARPANET to develop what has become the Internet, and the systems that support today's personal computers. They included:

*Powerful [[Engineering:Personal computer|personal computer]]s (including the [[Engineering:Xerox Alto|Xerox Alto]] and later "D-machines") with windowed displays and graphical user interfaces that inspired the [[Engineering:Apple Lisa|Apple Lisa]] and [[Engineering:Macintosh|Macintosh]]. The Computer Science Laboratory built the Alto, which was conceived by [[Biography:Butler Lampson|Butler Lampson]] and designed mostly by [[Biography:Charles P. Thacker|Charles P. Thacker]], [[Biography:Edward M. McCreight|Edward M. McCreight]], [[Biography:Bob Sproull|Bob Sproull]] and David Boggs. The Learning Research Group of PARC's Systems Science Laboratory (led by [[Biography:Alan Kay|Alan Kay]]) added the software-based "desktop" metaphor.<ref>Markoff, John, Innovator who helped create PC, Internet and mouse, New York Times, April 15, 2017, p.A14</ref> 
*[[Ethernet]], which networks local computers within a building or campus; and the first [[Internet]], a network that connected the Ethernet to the ARPANET utilizing PUP (PARC Universal Protocol), forerunner to TCP/IP. It was primarily designed by [[Biography:Robert Metcalfe|Robert Metcalfe]], Boggs, Thacker and Lampson.
*The electronics and software that led to the [[Engineering:Laser printing|laser printer]] (spearheaded by optical engineer Gary Starkweather, who transferred from Xerox's Webster, New York laboratory to work with CSL) and the  [[Interpress]] page description language that allowed [[Biography:John Warnock|John Warnock]] and Chuck Geschke to found [[Software:Adobe Systems|Adobe Systems]].
*"What-you-see-is-what-you-get" ([[WYSIWYG]]) word-processing programs, as exemplified by [[Software:Bravo|Bravo]], which [[Biography:Charles Simonyi|Charles Simonyi]] took to [[Company:Microsoft|Microsoft]] to serve as the basis for [[Software:Microsoft Word|Microsoft Word]].
*[[Software:SuperPaint|SuperPaint]], a pioneering graphics program and [[Framebuffer|framebuffer]] computer system developed by [[Biography:Richard Shoup (programmer)|Richard Shoup]]. The software was written in consultation with future Pixar co-founder [[Biography:Alvy Ray Smith|Alvy Ray Smith]], who could not secure an appointment at PARC and was retained as an independent contractor. Although Shoup received a special Emmy Award (shared with Xerox) in 1983 and an Academy Scientific Engineering Award (shared with Smith and Thomas Porter) in 1998 for his achievement, program development continued to be marginalized by Taylor and PARC, ultimately precipitating Shoup's departure in 1979.

Belying his lack of programming and engineering experience, Taylor was noted for his strident advocacy of Licklider-inspired distributed personal computing and his ability to maintain collegial and productive relationships between what was widely perceived as the foremost array of the epoch's leading computer scientists. This was exemplified by a weekly staff meeting at PARC (colloquially known as "Dealer" after Edward O. Thorp's ''Beat the Dealer'') in which staff members would lead a discussion about myriad topics. They would sit in a circle of beanbag chairs and open debate was encouraged. According to Kay, the meeting "was part of the larger ARPA community to learn how to argue to illuminate rather than merely to win. ... The main purposes of Dealer -- as invented and implemented by Bob Taylor -- were to deal with how to make things work and make progress without having a formal manager structure. The presentations and argumentation were a small part of a deal session (they did quite bother visiting Xeroids). It was quite rare for anything like a personal attack to happen (because people for the most part came into PARC having been blessed by everyone there -- another Taylor rule -- and already knowing how 'to argue reasonably')."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14111999|title=Interesting read on "Dealer" meetings. From the Myths of Creativity by David Bur... &#124; Hacker News}}</ref>

Throughout his tenure at PARC, Taylor frequently clashed with Elkind (who held budgetary responsibility for new projects but found his managerial authority undercut by Taylor's intimate relationships with the research staff) and Pake (who did not countenance Taylor's outsized influence in the laboratory and deprecatory attitude toward Xerox's physics research program, then directly overseen by Pake); as a result, he was not officially invited to the company's "Futures Day" demo (marking the public premiere of the Alto) in Boca Raton, Florida in 1977. However, after one of Elkind's extended absences (stemming from his ongoing involvement in other corporate and government projects), Taylor became the manager of the laboratory in early 1978.

In 1983, physicist and integrated circuit specialist William J. Spencer<!-- no article on this one --> became director of PARC. Spencer and Taylor disagreed about budget allocations for CSL (exemplified by the ongoing institutional divide between computer science and physics) and CSL's frustration with Xerox's inability to recognize and use what they had developed. By the end of the year, Taylor and most of the researchers at CSL left Xerox. A coterie of leading computer scientists (including Licklider, [[Biography:Donald Knuth|Donald Knuth]] and [[Biography:Dana Scott|Dana Scott]]) expressed their displeasure with Xerox's decision not to retain Taylor in a letter-writing campaign to CEO David Kearns.

===DEC SRC===
<!-- Xerox management could not be convinced of the possibilities of personal computing, and the researchers were frustrated.<ref>Smith, Douglas K. and Alexander, Robert C., "Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer" (1999)</ref> bit of a myth I think-->Taylor was hired by Ken Olsen of [[Company:Digital Equipment Corporation|Digital Equipment Corporation]], and formed the [[Organization:DEC Systems Research Center|Systems Research Center]] in Palo Alto.  Many of the former CSL researchers came to work at SRC.  Among the projects at SRC were the [[Modula-3]] programming language; the snoopy cache, used in the DEC Firefly multiprocessor workstation; the first multi-threaded Unix system; the first User Interface editor; the AltaVista search engine<ref>Markoff, John, Innovator who helped create the PC, Internet and the mouse, New York Times,
 April 15, 2017, p.A14</ref> and a networked Window System.

==Retirement and death==
Taylor retired from DEC in 1996. Following his divorce (coinciding with his departure from Xerox), he lived in a secluded house in Woodside, California.

In 2000, he voiced two concerns about the future of the Internet: control and access. In his words:
<blockquote>There are many worse ways of endangering a larger number of people on the Internet than on the highway. It's possible for people to generate networks that reproduce themselves and are very difficult or impossible to kill off. I want everyone to have the right to use it, but there's got to be some way to insure responsibility.<br /><br />Will it be freely available to everyone?  If not, it will be a big disappointment.<ref name="almanac"/></blockquote>

On April 13, 2017, he died at his home in Woodside, California. His son said he had suffered from [[Medicine:Parkinson's disease|Parkinson's disease]] and other health problems.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-robert-taylor-obit-20170414-story.html|work=Los Angeles Times|date=14 April 2017|title=Robert W. Taylor, a pioneer of the modern computer, dies at 85}}</ref>

==Awards==
In 1984, Taylor, [[Biography:Butler Lampson|Butler Lampson]], and [[Biography:Charles P. Thacker|Charles P. Thacker]] received the ACM Software Systems Award "for conceiving and guiding the development of the Xerox Alto System demonstrating that a distributed personal computer system can provide a desirable and practical alternative to time-sharing."<ref>{{cite web | title= ACM Software System Award Winners |url= http://awards.acm.org/software-system/award-winners |access-date=April 18, 2017 }}</ref> In 1994, all three were named [[ACM Fellow]]s in recognition of the same work.<ref>{{cite web |title= Robert W. Taylor ACM Awards |url= http://awards.acm.org/award_winners/taylor_1076264.cfm |access-date= April 18, 2017 |url-status= bot: unknown |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160316185916/http://awards.acm.org/award_winners/taylor_1076264.cfm |archive-date= March 16, 2016 }}</ref>  In 1999, Taylor received a National Medal of Technology and Innovation.  The citation read<!-- : "For visionary leadership in the development of modern computing technology, including initiating the ARPAnet project —forerunner of today's Internet—and advancing groundbreaking achievements in the development of the personal computer and computer networks." or --> "For visionary leadership in the development of modern computing technology, including computer networks, the personal computer and the graphical user interface."<ref>{{cite web |title= The National Medal of Technology and Innovation Recipients |year= 1999 |publisher= US Patent and Trademark Office|url= http://www.uspto.gov/about/nmti/recipients/1999.jsp#heading-4 |access-date= March 30, 2011 }}</ref>

In 2004, the National Academy of Engineering awarded him along with Lampson, Thacker and [[Biography:Alan Kay|Alan Kay]] their highest award, the Draper Prize. The citation reads: "for the vision, conception, and development of the first practical networked personal computers.<ref>{{cite web |title= Robert W. Taylor profile on NAE Website |url= https://www.nae.edu/Projects/Awards/DraperPrize/DraperWinners/page20048879/55018.aspx |access-date=April 18, 2017 }}</ref>"

In 2013, the Computer History Museum named him a Museum Fellow, "for his leadership in the development of computer networking, online information and communications systems, and modern personal computing."<ref>{{Cite web |title= Robert W. Taylor — CHM Fellow Award Winner |author= CHM |url= http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Robert,Taylor/ |access-date= March 30, 2015 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150327022226/http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Robert,Taylor |archive-date= March 27, 2015 }}</ref>

==See also==
* Internet pioneers

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book |author = M. Mitchell Waldrop |title = The Dream Machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal |publisher = Viking Penguin |year = 2001 |location = New York |isbn = 978-0-670-89976-0 |url-access = registration |url = https://archive.org/details/dreammachinejcrl00wald }}
* {{cite book |author = Michael A. Hiltzik |title= The Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age |publisher = HarperCollins |date = April 4, 2000 | isbn = 978-0-88730-989-2 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=lzgOduibRJgC }}
* {{cite web |title= In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider 1915–1990 |publisher= Digital Equipment Corporation Systems Research Center |location= Palo Alto, California |date= August 7, 1990 |url= http://memex.org/licklider.pdf }} Reprints of early papers with preface by Taylor

==External links==
* [http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/10.html? The New Old Boys From the ARPAnet] Extract from 'Tools for Thought' by Howard Rheingold
* [https://archive.today/20130113031037/http://awards.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=8751640&srt=year&year=1984&aw=149&ao=SOFTWSYS 1984 ACM Software Systems Award citation]
* [http://fellows.acm.org/fellow_citation.cfm?id=1076264&srt=all 1994 ACM Fellow citation]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20061214175121/http://www.nae.edu/NAE/awardscom.nsf/weblinks/LRAO-5WEUYY?OpenDocument 2004 Draper Prize citation]
* {{cite web |title= Oral History of Robert (Bob) W. Taylor |author= Paul McJones |date= October 11, 2008 |publisher= Computer History Museum |url= http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Taylor_Robert/102702015.05.01.acc.pdf |access-date= March 30, 2011 }}


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[[Category:American computer scientists]]

{{Sourceattribution|Robert Taylor (computer scientist)}}