Lawrence Moser "Larry" Breed (July 17, 1940 - May 16, 2021)
was a
computer scientist,
artist and
inventor, best known for his involvement in the programming language
APL.
Career
As an undergraduate at
Stanford University in 1961, he created the first computer animation language and system and used it at Stanford football half-times to coordinate images produced by a 100 ft-by-100 ft array of rooters holding up colored cards.
As a graduate student at Stanford, he corresponded with APL's inventor,
Ken Iverson, to correct the formal description of the
IBM System/360 which used Iverson's notation. He received his M.S. from Stanford in 1965, under academic supervisor
Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth (born 15 February 1934) is a Swiss computer scientist. He has designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally ...
. He then joined Iverson's group at IBM's
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...
in
Yorktown Heights, New York
Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census.
History
Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in northern ...
. In 1965 he and
Philip S. Abrams
Philip S. Abrams is a computer science researcher who co-authored the first implementation of the programming language APL.
APL
In 1962, Kenneth E. Iverson published his book ''A Programming Language,'' describing a mathematical notation for ...
created the first implementation of APL, written in
FORTRAN on an
IBM 7090
The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 se ...
.
He later created APL implementations for an experimental IBM ''Little Computer'', and the IBM 360 in 1966, and for the
IBM 1130
The IBM 1130 Computing System, introduced in 1965, was IBM's least expensive computer at that time. A binary 16-bit machine, it was marketed to price-sensitive, computing-intensive technical markets, like education and engineering, succeeding th ...
.
Breed was the 1973 recipient (with
Dick Lathwell and
Roger Moore) of the
Grace Murray Hopper Award from the
Association for Computing Machinery "for their work in the design and implementation of APL\360, setting new standards in simplicity, efficiency, reliability and response time for interactive systems."
With Dan Dyer and others he co-founded
Scientific Time Sharing Corporation
Scientific Time Sharing Corporation (STSC) was a pioneering timesharing and consulting service company which offered APL from its datacenter in Bethesda, MD to users in the United States and Europe.
History
Scientific Time Sharing Corporation ( ...
in 1969, where he led the development of the APL PLUS time-sharing system. While there, in 1972, he and Francis Bates III wrote
one of the world's first worldwide
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
systems, named ''Mailbox''.
Breed rejoined IBM in 1977. He helped develop the
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Art ...
(ISO) APL standard, then joined IBM efforts to port
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
onto IBM platforms. He worked on
compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...
s for the programming language
C,
floating-point arithmetic standardization, and
radix conversion, until retiring in 1992.
Retirement
Breed became a significant contributor to the
Burning Man event, under the
playa name of Ember. He coined the term "MOOP" (matter out of place), and conceived and built the first ''trash fence'' to capture windborne debris.
[ (see also the public comments at the end)] He created the spiraling, flaming sculpture "Chaotick", the playa’s longest-running art piece besides the Man himself,
and built artistic bicycle light effects. He edited and proofread the Black Rock Gazette newspaper, a role in which he continued as a co-founder and director of its successor the
Black Rock Beacon, and edited other Burning Man materials. As co-founder of the Earth Guardians, Breed promoted the "Leave No Trace" ethos, particularly in post-event cleanup.
In 1973 and 1974 he took first place, with co-solver Donna Breed, in the Dictionary Rally.
Gray-B-Gone and Evapotrons
Associated with his Burning Man activities, Breed devised the ''Gray-B-Gon'' and the ''Evapotron'' evaporators for
graywater
Greywater (or grey water, sullage, also spelled gray water in the United States) refers to domestic wastewater generated in households or office buildings from streams without fecal contamination, i.e., all streams except for the wastewater fro ...
disposal, and through Bay Area workshops directed construction, by Burning Man campers, of over 100 units, as of 2012.
Publications
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*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Breed, Lawrence M
1940 births
2021 deaths
IBM employees
Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates
Stanford University alumni
APL implementers
People from Stanford, California