Robert Stanley "Bob" Barton (February 13, 1925 – January 28, 2009) was the chief architect of the Burroughs

B5000 The Burroughs Large Systems Group produced a family of large 48-bit mainframes using stack machine instruction sets with dense syllables.E.g., 12-bit syllables for B5000, 8-bit syllables for B6500 The first machine in the family was the B5000 in ...

and other computers such as the

B1700 The Burroughs B1000 Series was a series of mainframe computers, built by the Burroughs Corporation, and originally introduced in the 1970s with continued software development until 1987. The series consisted of three major generations which were t ...

, a co-inventor of

dataflow architecture Dataflow architecture is a dataflow-based computer architecture that directly contrasts the traditional von Neumann architecture or control flow architecture. Dataflow architectures have no program counter, in concept: the executability and executi ...

, and an influential professor at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. His students at Utah have had a large role in the development of computer science. Barton designed machines at a more abstract level, not tied to the technology constraints of the time. He employed high-level languages and a

stack machine In computer science, computer engineering and programming language implementations, a stack machine is a computer processor or a virtual machine in which the primary interaction is moving short-lived temporary values to and from a push down st ...

in his design of the B5000 computer. Its design survives in the modern

Unisys Unisys Corporation is an American multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. It provides digital workplace solutions, cloud, applications, and infrastructure solutions, e ...

Burroughs MCP The MCP (Master Control Program) is the operating system of the Burroughs small, medium and large systems, including the Unisys Clearpath/MCP systems. MCP was originally written in 1961 in ESPOL (Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language). In ...

. His work with

architectures was the first implementation in a

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

. Barton died on January 28, 2009, in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, at age of 83."Robert Barton, 83, services pending"
''

The Hillsboro Argus ''The Hillsboro Argus'' was a twice-weekly newspaper in the city of Hillsboro, Oregon, from 1894 to 2017, known as the ''Washington County Argus'' for its final year. The ''Argus'' was distributed in Washington County, Oregon, United States. First ...

'', 2009-01-30.

Career

Barton was born in

New Britain, Connecticut New Britain is a city in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located approximately southwest of Hartford. According to 2020 Census, the population of the city is 74,135. Among the southernmost of the communities encompassed wit ...

in 1925 and received his BA in 1948, and his MS in 1949 in Mathematics, from the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

. His early experience with computers was when he worked in the IBM Applied Science Department in 1951. In 1954, he joined the

Shell Oil Company Shell USA, Inc. (formerly Shell Oil Company, Inc.) is the United States-based wholly owned subsidiary of Shell plc, a UK-based transnational corporation " oil major" which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 18,000 ...

Technical Services, working on programming applications. He worked at Shell Development, a research group in Texas where he worked with a Burroughs/Datatron 205 computer. In 1958, he studied

Irving Copi Irving Marmer Copi (; né Copilovich or Copilowish; July 28, 1917 – August 19, 2002) was an American philosopher, logician, and university textbook author. Biography Copi studied under Bertrand Russell while at the University of Chicago. I ...

and

Jan Łukasiewicz Jan Łukasiewicz (; 21 December 1878 – 13 February 1956) was a Polish logician and philosopher who is best known for Polish notation and Łukasiewicz logic His work centred on philosophical logic, mathematical logic and history of logic. He ...

's work on symbolic logic and

Polish notation Polish notation (PN), also known as normal Polish notation (NPN), Łukasiewicz notation, Warsaw notation, Polish prefix notation or simply prefix notation, is a mathematical notation in which operators ''precede'' their operands, in contrast t ...

,"Oral History: Burroughs B5000 Conference"
OH 98. Oral history on 6 September 1985, conducted by Bernard A. Galler and Robert F. Rosin, sponsored by AFIPS and Burroughs Corporation, at

Marina del Rey, California Marina del Rey (Spanish for "Marina of the King") is an unincorporated seaside community in Los Angeles County, California, with an eponymous harbor that is a major boating and water recreation destination of the greater Los Angeles area. The p ...

, archived by the

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. and considered its application to arithmetic expression processing on a computer. Barton joined

Burroughs Corporation The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled many ...

, ElectroData Division, in

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...

in the late 1950s. He managed a system programming group in 1959 which developed a

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 that ...

named BALGOL for the language

ALGOL 58 ALGOL 58, originally named IAL, is one of the family of ALGOL computer programming languages. It was an early compromise design soon superseded by ALGOL 60. According to John Backus The Zurich ACM-GAMM Conference had two principal motives in pro ...

on the Burroughs 220 computer. In 1960, he became a consultant for

Beckman Instruments Beckman Coulter Inc. is a Danaher Corporation company that develops, manufactures, and markets products that simplify, automate and innovate complex biomedical testing. It operates in two industries: Diagnostics and Life Sciences. For more than ...

working on data collection from satellite systems, for

Lockheed Corporation The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but ot ...

working on satellite systems and organizing of data processing services, and for Burroughs continuing to work on the design concepts of the B5000. After an assignment in Australia in 1963 for

Control Data Corporation Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...

, he returned in 1965 to join the Computer Science staff of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the

where, from 1968 to 1973, his colleagues included David C. Evans,

Ivan Sutherland Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subje ...

, and

Thomas Stockham Thomas Greenway Stockham (December 22, 1933 – January 6, 2004) was an American scientist who developed one of the first practical digital audio recording systems, and pioneered techniques for digital audio recording and processing. He also l ...

. His Ph.D. students at the University of Utah were Duane Call, cofounder of Computer System Architects; Alan Ashton, cofounder of WordPerfect; and

Al Davis Allen Davis (July 4, 1929 – October 8, 2011) was an American football coach and executive. He was the principal owner and general manager of the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) for 39 years, from 1972 until his death in ...

, University of Utah professor of computer science. Other Utah students that he influenced included:

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

James H. Clark James Henry Clark (born March 23, 1944) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in comput ...

cofounder of

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

John Warnock John Edward Warnock (born October 6, 1940) is an American computer scientist and businessman best known for co-founding Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company, with Charles Geschke. Warnock was President of Adobe for ...

, cofounder of

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

Ed Catmull Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics (computer sci ...

Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...

, Henri Gouraud (

Gouraud shading Gouraud shading, named after Henri Gouraud, is an interpolation method used in computer graphics to produce continuous shading of surfaces represented by polygon meshes. In practice, Gouraud shading is most often used to achieve continuous l ...

) and

Bui Tuong Phong Bui Tuong Phong (December 14, 1942 – July 1975) was a Vietnamese-born computer graphics researcher and pioneer. He invented the widely used Phong shading algorithm and Phong reflection model. Life Phong was born in Hanoi, then French Ind ...

(

Phong shading In 3D computer graphics, Phong shading, Phong interpolation, or normal-vector interpolation shading is an interpolation technique for surface shading invented by computer graphics pioneer Bui Tuong Phong. Phong shading interpolates surface nor ...

). After 1973, he devoted his full-time to Burroughs Systems Research in

La Jolla, San Diego, California LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...

, working on new computer architectures and systems programming.

Awards

* IEEE 1977

W. Wallace McDowell Award The W. Wallace McDowell Award is awarded by the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding theoretical, design, educational, practical, or related innovative contributions that fall within the scope of Computer Society interest. This is the highest tec ...

Recipient. ''“For his innovative architectural computer concepts, such as stack processing, data stored with self-describing tags, and the direct execution of higher level languages, as embodied in the B-5000 and successor machines”'' * Barton was the first recipient of the ACM/IEEE Computer Society

Eckert–Mauchly Award The Eckert–Mauchly Award recognizes contributions to digital systems and computer architecture. It is known as the computer architecture community’s most prestigious award. First awarded in 1979, it was named for John Presper Eckert and Jo ...

in 1979: ''For his outstanding contributions in basing the design of computing systems on the hierarchical nature of programs and their data.'' * ''Charter Computer Pioneer'' by the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Computer Society for his work in ''Language Directed Architecture.''

Selected papers

* * * * * *

Quotes

"Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult." (1967)

References

"Robert S. Barton: IEEE 1977 W. Wallace McDowell Award Recipient"

External links

History of the School of Computing – University of Utah

History of the College of Engineering – University of Utah
(see pp. 52, 63)
A Critical Review of the State of the Programming Art

A New Approach to the Functional Design of a Digital Computer (Barton, 1961)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barton, Robert S. Computer hardware engineers Burroughs Corporation people 1925 births 2009 deaths University of Iowa alumni University of Utah faculty Unisys