Roger Everett Gregory is a US computer programmer, technologist, and scientist. Gregory's work in project Xanadu made him one of the earliest pioneers of

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...

technology, which helped lay the foundations for the hyperlink technology that underlies the World Wide Web. Gregory attended the University of Michigan as a mathematics major. In the 1970s, he founded the Ann Arbor Computer Club, similar to the West Coast's Home Brew Computer Club. In 1974 Gregory met Theodore Holm (Ted) Nelson, the author of

Computer Lib/Dream Machines ''Computer Lib/Dream Machines'' is a 1974 book by Ted Nelson, printed as a two-front-cover paperback to indicate its " intertwingled" nature. Originally self-published by Nelson, it was republished with a foreword by Stewart Brand in 1987 by Micr ...

, and the thinker who coined the term "hypertext". The pair became friends. In 1979 Nelson convinced Gregory to move from Michigan and join him in

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Swarthmore ( , ) is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Swarthmore was originally named "Westdale" in honor of noted painter Benjamin West, who was one of the early residents of the town. The name was changed to "Swarthmore" after the es ...

, the small, sleepy college town outside of Philadelphia where Nelson earned his undergraduate degree, and first conceived the concept of a hypertext. Gregory's first summer in Swarthmore, characterized by Xanadu insiders as the ''"Swarthmore Summer"'', was a productive time, where Nelson and Gregory enjoyed the collaboration of other volunteers, including Stuart Greene and

Mark S. Miller Mark S. Miller is an American computer scientist. He is known for his work as one of the participants in the 1979 hypertext project known as Project Xanadu; for inventing Miller columns; and the open-source coordinator of the E programming lan ...

. In 1988 Nelson, Gregory, and other members of their team, all moved to Sausalito, California, when Autodesk, a manufacturer of

Computer aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

software, purchased a controlling interest in the Xanadu Project. Later, as founder, CEO, CTO and Chairman of the Board of Xanadu Operating Company, Gregory led design and development of a hypertext technology that includes quotable documents with version control, fine-grained, bidirectional links, the ability to track intellectual property rights, and a mechanism to pay royalties. Gregory is also co-designer of a rotary rocket engine design based on the posthumous patents of Robert Goddard (U.S. patent 6212876 from 2001). Today he is a cofounder of Eyegorithm. In 2010 Gregory was interviewed by the Internet Archive.

References

External links

* Letter detailing information on project Xanadu: https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_64.html
Roger Gregory Interview at Ted Nelson Book Launch

Udanax, the open-source release of the Xanadu code base
for Squeak, a Smalltalk implementation * Roger's site documenting th
rotary rocket engine
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American computer programmers University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni {{US-scientist-stub