Alan Field Shugart (September 27, 1930 – December 12, 2006) was an American engineer, entrepreneur and business executive whose career defined the modern computer disk drive industry.

Personal history

Born in Los Angeles, he graduated from the

University of Redlands The University of Redlands is a private university headquartered in Redlands, California. The university's main, residential campus is situated on 160 acres (65 ha) near downtown Redlands. An additional eight regional locations throughout Califo ...

, receiving a degree in

engineering physics Engineering physics, or engineering science, refers to the study of the combined disciplines of physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, particularly computer, nuclear, electrical, electronic, aerospace, materials or mechanical en ...

. Shugart was the father of three children: Joanne Shugart (1951-1954), Christopher D. Shugart (b. 1953) and Teri L.K. Shugart (b. 1955). Shugart was married to Esther Marrs (née Bell), the mother of his three children, from 1951 until 1973. He was married to

Rita Shugart Rita Shugart (née Kennedy) is an American Contract bridge, bridge player. Shugart won her first national title in 1998. She won the Reisinger, arguably the most difficult of all the North American Bridge Championships to win, in consecutive year ...

(née Kennedy) from 1981 until his death. Shugart died on December 12, 2006 in

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...

of complications from heart surgery he had undergone six weeks earlier.

Career

He began his career in 1951 as a field engineer at IBM. In 1955 he transferred to the IBM San Jose laboratory where he worked on the

IBM 305 RAMAC The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving-head hard disk drive (magnetic disk storage) for secondary storage. The system was publicly announced on September 14, 1956,

. He rose through a series of increasingly important positions to become the Direct Access Storage Product Manager, responsible for disk storage products, IBM's most profitable businesses at that time. Among the groups reporting to Shugart was the team that invented the

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

. Shugart joined

Memorex Memorex Corp. began as a computer tape producer and expanded to become both a consumer media supplier and a major IBM plug compatible peripheral supplier. It was broken up and ceased to exist after 1996 other than as a consumer electronics bran ...

in 1969 as Vice President of its Equipment Division and led the development of its 3660 (compatible with IBM 2314) and 3670 (compatible with IBM 3330) disk storage subsystems. His team also developed the Memorex 650, one of the first commercially available floppy disk drives. He founded

Shugart Associates Shugart Associates (later Shugart Corporation) was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the -inch "Minifloppy" floppy disk drive. In 1979 it was one of the f ...

in February 1973 and resigned as CEO in October 1974. The company was later acquired by

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

. Then he and

Finis Conner Finis Conner (born July 28, 1943) is an American entrepreneur and pioneer of the disk drive industry, founding industry leaders Shugart Associates, Seagate Technology and Conner Peripherals. Conner Peripherals, a major HDD manufacturer, was foun ...

started Shugart Technology in 1979, which soon changed its name to

Seagate Technology Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquart ...

. With Shugart as CEO, Seagate became the world’s largest independent manufacturer of disk drives and related components. In July 1998, Shugart resigned his positions with Seagate.

Political activity

In 1996, he launched an unsuccessful campaign to elect Ernest, his

Bernese Mountain Dog The Bernese Mountain Dog (german: Berner Sennenhund) is a large dog breed, one of the four breeds of Sennenhund- type dogs from Bern, Switzerland and the Swiss Alps. These dogs have roots in the Roman mastiffs. The name ''Sennenhund'' is derived ...

, to Congress. Shugart later wrote about that experience in a book, ''Ernest Goes to Washington (Well, Not Exactly)''. He backed a failed ballot initiative in 2000 to give California voters the option of choosing "none of the above" in elections.

Awards

He received the 1997 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award. In 2005, he was made a Fellow of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

"for his lifelong contributions to the creation of the modern disk drive industry."

References

External links

Al Shugart's Speech At Conference marking 100th Anniversary of Magnetic Recording, December 14, 1998Al Shugart milestones at Computer History MuseumAl Shugart biography at Computer History Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shugart, Alan 1930 births 2006 deaths American computer businesspeople American manufacturing businesspeople American technology chief executives Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area IBM employees University of Redlands alumni