3/14/2016 Celebrity Crushby Mike Anastasia, BBN Colleague
After my first week at BBN I called my girlfriend one evening. "I stood behind Ray Tomlinson in the sandwich line today! He ordered pastrami." She was not impressed. "Who?" "Ray Tomlinson, the guy who put the @ sign in our email addresses. He's like, a living legend." "You're such a nerd" Over the next decade I got to work side by side with Ray on a number of projects, and he became a colleague and mentor. To this day, however, my girlfriend (now wife) teases me about my celebrity crush on him. 3/14/2016 Octopus Warsby Alice Leung, BBN Colleague In 2008, a group of my friends was engaged in a game called Octopus Wars. We each had a small stuffed octopus which we documented performing a number of competitive quests, earning points towards becoming the exalted ruler of the octopus kingdom. One such quest was to be photographed buddying up with a famous person. Ray quite kindly agreed to be photographed with my octopus (Gertrude) for this contest. This was just another example of how Ray was entertained by things that other people might find a bit goofy, and how he had a sense of humor about being famous. I know that at least one junior developer in our department was thrilled to have Ray's autograph. Ray was also willing to help out with other unusual requests that took significant effort. In 2006, a group of middle school students from the Timilty School in Roxbury came to visit BBN as a reward for their good science fair projects. This school serves a largely minority community where many students don't know a lot of scientists. Ray volunteered to demonstrate software programming to these students. He came up with an activity where some students pretended to be computer robots and other students tried to "program" them to move around a room using a small set of commands on cards. Many "bugs" happened, and the student robots blundered into furniture and walls, entertaining the kids. For many of the students, this was the first time they heard about programming, and their first time meeting a professional scientist or engineer. I think this activity made a big impression on the kids. Though they were probably more immediately impressed with the cafeteria (pizza and french fries on the same day!) I hope that meeting a number of real-life scientists and seeing how friendly they were, and how excited they were to share their work, may have encouraged them to consider such careers for themselves. 3/12/2016 His modesty was sorely tested...by Billy Salter, BBN Colleague
Like many at BBN I knew and greatly admired Ray and had many small and enjoyable interactions with him over the years. We eventually worked on a big DARPA project together, with several BBN teams and multiple contractors. His modesty was sorely tested one day when the overall technical lead (a pretentious fellow whom nobody liked and few respected) was going on and on about TCP and what it did and didn't do, getting some stuff wrong that even I spotted. Ray said something to gently correct a point and the guy -- not a BBNer, of course -- got really nasty and condescending, as the BBNers in the room looked at each other with little smiles. Finally the guy pitched Ray the perfect set-up line -- what made him think he knew so much about TCP? -- and Ray, still gently but quite clearly explained why he thought he did, in fact, know a lot about it. Everybody was delighted, the non-BBNers perhaps even more than we were, since we already knew. The tech lead was suitably humbled, and was much quieter from them on. (By the way, Doug Engelbart, then well into his 70's, worked on that project also, another guy who will forever live in computer history). 3/11/2016 Ray's @-sign Concept Testerby Camille Depesa, wife of Bob DePesa, BBN Colleague
My deceased husband, Robert (Bob) DePesa worked at BBN for many years and had the opportunity to work with Ray who was a mentor to him. I remember one day when Bob came home and told me that a friend and employee of BBN had an interesting concept in technology -- that of course being the @ sign that he wanted to put to a test. Bob was asked by Ray if he could test it out on him. So Bob was a proud recipient of the testing of the @ sign and felt honored to had been one of the first to test it out, I did not know Ray personally but from what Bob told me about him I believe he was one of a kind, he did his job so diligently and without praise and created what is now used worldwide. He is a true hero and I know he will be sorely missed by all that knew him.... 3/11/2016 ... Ray saved my bacon ...by Terry Crowley, BBN Colleague, Microsoft I was lucky enough to work closely with Ray for 10 years. A bunch of stories stand out for me:
3/8/2016 Helped connect us allby Carl Howe, BBN Coleague
I saw today that Ray’s obit was featured more prominently in the New York Times than it was in the Boston Globe. I will always remember him as a pioneer of the global Internet we now know it than the few computers connected by the Arpanet. Perhaps it is fitting that the world will remember him better and with more reverence than his more parochial home town newspaper. All of us who ever worked with him will miss him terribly for his humble and kind leadership. By this point, I’m sure everyone has seen most of the tributes, but on the off chance someone hasn’t, I particularly like the photo that MIT tweeted today about him (http://twitter.com/MIT_Spectrum/status/707225637661106176/photo/1) and the NPR article which depicts him receiving the 2009 Prince of Asturias Award Laureate for the Technical and Scientific Research from Spain's Prince Felipe. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/03/07/469492182/in-memoriam-ray-tomlinson-who-put-the-sign-in-your-email Ray, you were an inspiration to us all. We miss you already. As a final tribute, I would like to note that my posting to this email list from Mumbai, India, where I am working for the next two weeks, would not be possible without Ray’s work. Thank you again, Ray. You helped connect us all. by Don Allen, BBN Colleague
I am saddened to learn of Ray's passing. He was one of the most talented people I've ever worked with. I joined the Tenex group in 1972, before the 10 Moulton Street building was built. We were all at 50 Moulton. There was a small eating area in that building where we would have coffee or something to eat. For some reason, this room seem to inspire Ray, because he frequently designed things there -- on paper napkins. It was quite amazing to observe. I hope at least some of those napkins have been preserved -- some might be historical documents, despite 40-year-old coffee stains. A group of us, Ray included, were out somewhere one day. I can't tell you exactly where it was, but I suspect we'd gone to Steve's Ice Cream in Davis Square. Those of you who knew Ray personally know that he could whistle extraordinarily well. I watched him go into a phone booth, call the modem that gave access to the Tenex systems, and he logged in to one of them BY WHISTLING AT IT. We verified it when we got back. A virtuoso performance. In those days (1970s) we had lunch-time volleyball games that became serious in the sense of trying to play correctly (not in the sense of forgetting that it was a game). Ray played almost every day and he was good. He was big, strong and well-coordinated. He could really spike the ball. You went up to try to block his shots at your peril. I last saw Ray a few years ago at Jordan Hall, at an Andras Schiff recital. We talked during intermission and he told me about his and Karen's sheep. He was obviously very into what they were doing and told me of some software he'd written to assist with their breeding efforts, details at his fingertips, which was so like Ray. We've lost a great one. by Mary Trvalik, BBN Colleague, Raytheon BBN When I worked with Ray in the early to mid-90's, it always struck me that he was such a gentle soul. We worked together developing user interfaces for an early shared-mapping application, Ray playing the role of mentor without doubt. But not a mentor dispersing wisdom and high thinking from a pedestal; he was just Ray, doggedly working, helping to chase bugs, chatting over approaches and more often than not, sharing a wry point of view that would leave us all rolling our eyes, and laughing. What a joy and comfort to have him just down the hall, as a colleague once again, when I returned in 2012 after my long, long absence. Does anyone remember a photo that Ray used to have on his bulletin board? It was a photo of a car plunged about a third of the way through Ray's (closed) garage door. Ray said that he and his wife had left for an evening out - leaving this car parked in the driveway - and returned home to find it in the aforementioned state. Inside, asking their (recently-permitted?) daughter what had happened, she replied, blankly, that she "had no idea how that could have happened". And held tight to that story. I hope it's true - that I've remembered it correctly - I've shared it dozens of times, and used it to inspire patience as I have raised my own flock of occasionally-inscrutable teenagers. P.S. Just as an aside, when my son was making final decisions about schools, last spring, we attended the admitted-student day at RPI. There, along with other swag, they gave away decks of cards with fun facts about Rensselaer - including one about Ray [the photo of the playing card at the top of this post] by Charlie Birnbaum, BBN Colleague
I did not know Ray Tomlinson except when I started at BBN in bldg 1. He was the cool guy down the hall who 'invented' the @ sign. However i did later work with Karen Seo to whom I wish to offer my condolences at her immeasurable loss. by Julie Sussman, BBN Colleague
I was planning to write up this anecdote even before I read this excerpt from the AP article: "Harry Forsdick, who commuted for 15 years with Tomlinson, said he was the best programmer at the company and many younger engineers aspired to be like him." I guess I was one of the younger engineers Harry mentioned. I joined BBN (the systems group, headed by Jerry Burchfiel) in December 1973 and was put to work on Ray's message programs (no word "e-mail" back then). Over the years I worked with Ray on other projects too. My memory of the context of the conversation below is a little fuzzy, but it's something like this: In the early '80s some of us were working on software for VLSI. Don Allen was writing a proposal and I think was going to head the project. There was some question of whether I wanted to co-lead it. Jerry Burchfiel (department head) asked to talk with me, and our conversation was going around in circles. We were clearly failing to communicate, so finally I asked, "What are you trying to ask me?" and he said, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" to which my answer was: "Ray Tomlinson." The point was that I wasn't interested in getting into management at any level; and at BBN, unlike most companies, you didn't have to move "up" to management from hands-on work in order to be respected. Ray was the prime example of this. In the longer term I did not follow in his footsteps (in fact, I left both BBN and programming) -- but how many people could?! |
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