Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls Jr. (born 1944) is a pioneer of

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impleme ...

computer programming Computer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called computer program, programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of proc ...

and the principal

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

, designer and implementer of five generations of

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

environments. He designed the

bytecode Bytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references (normal ...

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

that made Smalltalk practical in 1976. He also invented

bit blit Bit blit (also written BITBLT, BIT BLT, BitBLT, Bit BLT, Bit Blt etc., which stands for ''bit block transfer'') is a data operation commonly used in computer graphics in which several bitmaps are combined into one using a ''boolean function''. Th ...

, the general-purpose graphical operation that underlies most

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

systems today, and pop-up menus. He designed the generalizations of BitBlt to arbitrary color depth, with built-in

scaling Scaling may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics and physics * Scaling (geometry), a linear transformation that enlarges or diminishes objects * Scale invariance, a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energ ...

rotation Rotation or rotational/rotary motion is the circular movement of an object around a central line, known as an ''axis of rotation''. A plane figure can rotate in either a clockwise or counterclockwise sense around a perpendicular axis intersect ...

, and

anti-aliasing Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording. Specific topics in anti-aliasing include: * Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used b ...

. He made major contributions to the

Squeak Squeak is an object-oriented, class-based, and reflective programming language. It was derived from Smalltalk-80 by a group that included some of Smalltalk-80's original developers, initially at Apple Computer, then at Walt Disney Imaginee ...

version of Smalltalk, including the original concept of a Smalltalk written in itself and made

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

and efficient by a Smalltalk-to- C

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

Education

Ingalls received his

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

(B.A.) in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, and his

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

(M.S.) in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. While working toward a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

(Ph.D.) at Stanford, he started a company to sell a software measurement invention that he perfected, and never returned to

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

Work

Ingalls' first well known research was at

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

, where he began a lifelong research association with

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist who pioneered work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox ...

, and did his award-winning work on Smalltalk. As Peter Siebel wrote about Dan in his book Coders at Work, Reflections on the Craft of Programming, "If Alan Kay is Smalltalk's father, Dan Ingalls is its mother—Smalltalk may have started as a gleam in Alan Kay's eye, but Ingalls is the one who did the hard work of bringing it into the world. Starting with the first implementation of Smalltalk, written in BASIC and based on one page of notes from Kay, Ingalls has been involved in implementing seven generations of Smalltalk from the first prototype to the present-day open source implementation, Squeak." Dan's design principles for Smalltalk included the important concepts of personal mastery, good design in a uniform framework, language for communication, interaction of language, the concept of "objects", storage management, messages, and other principles outlined in his Byte Magazine article in 1981, "Design Principles of Smalltalk". In 2020, Ingalls wrot
The Evolution of Smalltalk
for the ACM HOPL Conference, ACM Program. Lang., Vol. 4, No. HOPL, Article 85. Publication date: June 2020, which details the design of Smalltalk through Ingalls's multiple iterations of the language, including his development of Squeak in 1996. Although some may not be familiar with the language of Smalltalk or the fact that it began object orientation in programming, it is still a useful and well-used language.

Larry Tesler Lawrence Gordon Tesler (April 24, 1945 – February 16, 2020) was an American computer scientist who worked in the field of human–computer interaction. Tesler worked at Xerox PARC, Apple Inc., Apple, Amazon.com, Amazon, and Yahoo!. While at PA ...

mentioned to

and Dan Ingalls that he thought blocks of bits could be easily moved on the screen. Ingalls told Larry that he would learn how to program in the lowest-level microcode to harness all available power. Diana Merry had been working on programming text display, and after talking to her, Ingalls dug into the problem. Months later, he figured out a way to move information that was "bit efficient."What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
pp. 249-250 "The idea had come to him visually. When you are moving information on the display, whether it is scrolling or copying text or copying a graphical image from one place to another, you have a source and a destination within the computer's memory. In his mind, he envisioned the concept as a wheel that rotated from the starting point to the end point. It was an idea that seemed obvious after Ingalls had conceived of it, and it has been copied widely by all of the graphical computing systems that have followed. Today it remains at the heart of both the Macintosh and Windows computing worlds. In the early 1970s, however, it was a radically new idea. Called

Bit Blit Bit blit (also written BITBLT, BIT BLT, BitBLT, Bit BLT, Bit Blt etc., which stands for ''bit block transfer'') is a data operation commonly used in computer graphics in which several bitmaps are combined into one using a ''boolean function''. Th ...

, it enabled graphical menu systems to "pop-up" instantly on an Alto screen in response to a mouse click. As much as any single software innovation, Bit Blit made the modern graphical computer interface possible." Ingalls moved to

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

He left research in 1987, for a time to run the family business, the Homestead Resort, in

Hot Springs, Virginia Hot Springs is a census-designated place (CDP) in Bath County, Virginia, Bath County, Virginia, United States. The population as of the United States Census, 2020, 2020 Census was 524. It is located about southwest of Warm Springs, Virginia, Warm ...

. The Ingalls family owned and operated the Homestead Resort for 100 years. Ingalls returned to Silicon Valley in 1995, first working at

Interval Research Corporation Interval Research Corporation was founded in 1992 by Paul Allen and David Liddle. It was a Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator focusing on consumer product applications and services with a focus on the Internet. A 1997 version of the ...

, and then returned to Apple. Starting at Xerox, and then at Apple, he developed Fabrik, a

visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS), also known as diagrammatic programming, graphical programming or block coding, is a programming language that lets users create computer program, programs by ...

and

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

(IDE), consisting of a kit of computing and

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

components that can be "wired" together to build new components and useful

application software Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

. Then he moved to

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

Labs, where he developed a module architecture for

. He also started a small firm, Weather Dimensions, Inc., which displays local

weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...

data on home computers. Ingalls then worked as a Distinguished

Engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

, where he worked in the

Sun Microsystems Laboratories Oracle Labs (formerly Sun Microsystems Laboratories, or Sun Labs) is a research and development branch of Oracle Corporation. The labs were created when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems. Sun Labs was established in 1990 by Ivan Sutherland and Rober ...

(Sun Labs) research wing. His latest project is a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

environment named

Lively Kernel The Lively Kernel is an open-source web programming environment, developed by Dan Ingalls when he was at SAP Research. It supports desktop-style applications with rich graphics and direct manipulation abilities, but without the installation or up ...

, which allows live,

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

programming and objects from inside

Web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

s. While best known for his work on Smalltalk, Ingalls is also known for developing an

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...

system for

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

writing, which he did in collaboration with his father, Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Sr., a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

. Ingalls moved to

SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a s ...

Palo Alto Research Center, as a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

. He was a key member of the chief scientist team guiding the company's technology vision, direction, and execution. He moved his research group t
YCombinator
to a newly formed YCombinator Research Group, YCR, where he continued his research, living near the beach in Rio del Mar,

Aptos, California Aptos (Ohlone for "The People") is an unincorporated town in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. The town is made up of several small villages, which together form Aptos: Aptos Hills-Larkin Valley, Aptos Village, Cabrillo, Seacliff, ...

with his wife Cathleen Galas, where he also contributed to development of the

implementation of Smalltalk, JavaScript research, and the Lively Kernel Project, which now resides at the

Hasso Plattner Institute The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH (; HPI) is an information technology non-profit company affiliated with the University of Potsdam in Potsdam, Brandenburg, northeastern Germany. The teaching and research of HPI are f ...

. Ingalls now consults and lives near the beach in Manhattan Beach, California, with his wife, Cathleen Galas.

Awards

In 1984, Ingalls received the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM)

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...

for Outstanding Young Scientist, for his

research, including

. In 1987, with

, and Adele Goldberg, he received the

ACM Software System Award The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded b ...

, for his work on

, the first fully

object oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impleme ...

software system. In 2002, he was co-recipient, with Adele Goldberg, of the

Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming award The Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award was an annual prize given to individuals who, in the opinion of the editors of Dr. Dobb's Journal, "made significant contributions to the advancement of software development." The Excellence in Program ...

. Includes biographical sketch. In 2022, Ingalls was made a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...

for creating, developing and building seven generations of the Smalltalk programming environment, and promoting object-oriented programming. Also in 2022, Dan Ingalls received the Senior Dahl-Nygaard Prize at

ECOOP The European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP) is an annual conference covering topics on object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications. Like other conferences, ECOOP offers various tracks and many simultaneous s ...

for his impact on modern computing.

Bibliography

Dan Ingalls Bio
biography on Squeak site
FLOSS Weekly interview with Dan Ingalls
* Ingalls, Daniel (1975
Untitled interoffice memo of November 19, 1975, Xerox PARC
* Ingalls, Daniel H.H. and Daniel H.H. Ingalls 1985: The Mahābhārata: Stylistic study, computer analysis and concordance. Journal of South Asian Literature 20:17-46. * Ingalls, Daniel H. H. and Daniel H. H. Ingalls 1980
Video of joint lecture on Sanskrit OCR given at Xerox PARC in 1980
* Wujastyk, D. (1988
Report on the Sanskrit Text Archive Conference
Austin, Texas, October 28–29, 1988. *Object-Oriented Programming, July 1989 *, , Dan Ingalls and Krzysztof Palacz
"Web Browser as an Application Platform: The Lively Kernel Experience"
Sun Labs, Report Number: TR-2008-175, Jan 30, 2008. *Dan Ingalls demos Lively at Google, March 2008 *Dan Ingalls: The Live Web, Drag 'n Drop in the Cloud, JS Conf, 2012 *Dan Ingalls: YOW! 2016 - Pronto: Toward a Designer's Notebook *Daniel Ingalls: The Evolution of Smalltalk

References

External links

An interview of Dan at QCon London 2010

Sanskrit and OCR
A video of Dan and his father recorded at Xerox PARC April 17, 1980 *
Dan Ingalls: Lecture on object-oriented programming
video at archive.org
Lively Kernel project page

video archive for the EE380 talk

Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk
*Recording of Dan Ingalls' ECOOP'22 Keynote Available
A recording of Dan Ingalls’ Association Internationale pour les Technologies Objets Dahl-Nygaard Senior Prize Keynote is available on YouTube

"Back to the Future: the story of Squeak, a practical Smalltalk written in itself" by Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, John Maloney, Scott Wallace, Alan Kay. Paper presented at OOPSLA, Atlanta, Georgia, 1997 by Dan Ingalls.

Dahl-Nygaard Senior Prize: Dan Ingalls, A Fireside Chat (Berlin, 2022)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ingalls, Daniel Henry Holmes Jr. 1944 births Harvard University alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni American computer scientists American computer programmers Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates Living people Dahl–Nygaard Prize People from Aptos, California Scientists at PARC (company)