In a recent oral history I conducted for the Computer History Museum, Don put into context his work designing SQL in collaboration with Ray Boyce. Don described the pre-relational database management systems, Ted Codd’s development of the relational model, various implementation projects at IBM culminating in System R, which was the first RDBMS to support SQL. Don went on to describe other pioneering relational systems, including Ingres and Oracle. He also described his subsequent work on text processing, DB/2, and XQuery.

For further historical information about Don and his work, see:

• Burt Grad, Moderator. RDBMS Workshop: Technology Through 1983, Computer History Museum, June 12, 2007. http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102658267
• Donald D. Chamberlin, OH 329. Oral history interview by Philip L. Frana, 3 October 2001, San Jose, California. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/display.phtml?id=317
• Paul McJones, editor. The 1995 SQL Reunion: People, Projects, and Politics. Technical Note 1997-018, Systems Research Center, Digital Equipment Corporation, August 1997.
  http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-TN-1997-018.html

The lecture was in the form of an interview by New York Times technology reporter John Markoff, who noted:

The Internet has many fathers, but few deserve the label more than Robert W. Taylor.

Authors M. Mitchell Waldrop (The Dream Machine) and Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age) shared their views as well. J Strother Moore and Gary Chapman (who each worked with Bob in the past and now have UT positions) served as masters of ceremony.

The announcement for the lecture includes links to news stories about Bob, as well as the famous 1968 paper by Licklider and Taylor, “The Computer as a Communication Device”. The recap of the lecture includes links to a video and photographs.

Here are summaries of the contents (corresponding to the six videotapes):

1. Taylor’s childhood, education, military service in the US Navy during the Korean War, and his first positions after graduating from college: teaching at a prep school in Florida, and systems engineering at The Martin Company in Orlando, Florida; managing research at NASA and at ARPA IPTO.
2. The ARPANET project, the founding of the graphics work at the University of Utah; his own brief stay at the University of Utah; the founding and early history of the Xerox PARC Computer Science Laboratory (CSL); Xerox’s purchase of Scientific Data Systems (SDS), and CSL’s MAXC, Alto, and EARS projects.
3. More on the Alto system and what it influenced (including TCP/IP); the Future Day held by PARC for Xerox executives; the Dorado project.
4. His departure from Xerox; the founding of the DEC Systems Research Center (SRC); the Firefly, Alpha Demonstration Unit, Autonet, AN2, and Petal projects; the founding of the DEC Paris Research Laboratory and its collaboration with SRC; the nearby DEC Western Research Laboratory (WRL) and its Titan project; a recap of the commercialization of Ethernet.
5. Wes Clark, his TX-2 work, his LINC work, and his suggestion of decentralizing control for the ARPANET via a small computer (IMP) at every host; Taylor’s work in Vietnam at the end of his ARPA tenure; his approach to research management, including recruiting, interviewing, and performance appraisals.
6. More on research management: informal celebrations, and the importance of a college intern program; reminiscences about people who worked at Xerox PARC CSL or DEC SRC or both.