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Oral History of Robert (Bob) W. Taylor

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Oral History of Robert (Bob) W. Taylor Oral History of Robert (Bob) W. Taylor Interviewed by: Paul McJones Recorded: October 10 - October 11, 2008 Woodside, California CHM Reference number: X5059.2009 © 2008 Computer History Museum Oral History of Robert (Bob) Taylor McJones: My name is Paul McJones. It’s October 10th, 2008. We’re going to conduct an oral history interview with Bob Taylor, and we have, behind the camera, Ken Beckman. Hello, Bob. Taylor: Hello, Paul. Hello, Ken [Bob’s friend and colleague at Xerox and DEC]. McJones: Bob, I thought it would be good to start at the beginning and have you tell us a little bit about growing up, your parents and early school and other experiences like that. Taylor: The very beginning? All right. This may be a little complicated. I was adopted when I was 28 days old in San Antonio, Texas. I was born in Dallas, so somehow or another, I don’t remember how, I moved, during my first 28 days of life, from Dallas to San Antonio. I was adopted from an orphanage, in effect, by a Methodist minister and his wife. They could not have any children of their own. They didn’t have RH negative things figured out in those days, so they adopted me. And during the first few years of my life I lived in small Texas towns where my father was a Methodist preacher. And then when I was about four, I guess, something like that, my father became a professor in a small Methodist college in San Antonio and we lived there for ten or eleven years. During World War II, he was in the Chaplain’s Corp. and was overseas. And when he came back, he went back into the ministry and was located in South Texas where I finished high school. I then went to college. Taylor: So I was born in 1932 and lived in various Texas towns. I might as well mention them: Uvalde, Ozona, Victoria, and then San Antonio, which is not such a small town. In 1946, we moved to Mercedes, Texas, which is down in the Rio Grande Valley on the Mexican border. In 1948 at the age of 16, I graduated from high school there and went off to college in Dallas at SMU [Southern Methodist University]. Three years later, I was in the Naval Air Reserve and the Korean War occurred, and I was put on active duty at the Dallas Naval Air Station, referred to affectionately as the U.S.S. Neverfloat. And after 22 months of active service, the Korean War was over so they released us two months earlier than they would have normally and I went back to college, this time at the University of Texas and this time as a more serious student than previously. McJones: I understand your mother was a teacher? Taylor: Well, she did do some teaching, but mostly she was, when I was there, after I came into her life, why she was mostly just my mother. My dad was a minister and then for a period of a few years was a professor in a small college, and then was in the Army as a chaplain during World War II and then went back into the ministry after that. McJones: So education was a definite theme in your family? Taylor: Yes. My dad has a Bachelor’s degree and a Divinity degree, and then he’s got a Master’s of divinity from Yale. His other college was in Texas, at the University of Texas and SMU, but he got a Master’s at Yale before he came back to Texas and went into the ministry. And then he and my mother, before I was born, were teaching missionaries in Brazil for five years, and then they came back to the states, and that’s when I was adopted. So yes, education was important to them. CHM Ref: X5059.2009 © 2008 Computer History Museum Page 2 of 74 Oral History of Robert (Bob) Taylor McJones: And you were able to graduate from high school at the age of 16 so I assume you got good grades? Taylor: Well, what happened was <laughs> let’s see. When I was four or five years old, my parents sent me to a special school that was an experimental school run by this college that my dad taught at. This was an unusual school. The school didn’t last for very long, a few years, I guess. And it was pre-public school so I went there, I think, from the age of four and five or something like that. And at this school, among other innovations, they would conduct for a one-week period, they would conduct everything, all the classes and their playground activity and their lunchtime activity in English. And the next week they would do it in Spanish. The next week they would do it in French. The next week they would do it in German and then they would go back to English, which was rather amazing. Now, today I don’t know any of those languages, but I gather at the time I had a five-year-old, or maybe a three-year-old’s vocabulary in some of them. And years later, when I would be in Germany or France, if I was in those countries for as long as a week or two, phrases would come back to me. I mean, I would utter some phrase and then I would ask myself, well, how did I know what that meant? It’s a very strange phenomenon. So by the time I started to public school at age six, I knew how to read, from my previous schooling. And furthermore, in this small college where my dad taught, there was a Psych professor whose field was intelligence testing. And he was lecturing to his class one particular period of time about intelligence tests, and he asked my dad if he could use me as a Guinea pig in front of his class and give me an intelligence test in front of the class so he could show the class an actual test underway. So my dad said, “Oh, sure.” And so they did that, and the professor was surprised at the score. There’s no point in me mentioning it except that it comes in later when I’m going to public school. The results of the test made the front page of the San Antonio Express, which is their local newspaper, and with a picture and all. And so my mother <laughs> takes me on the first day of public school and she goes in and shows this teacher, kindergarten teacher, I guess. “Now, my son already knows how to read and I just wanted to let you know. And there’s this thing in the paper.” Sounds typical of a mother, right? And so the kindergarten teacher handed me this kindergarten book that they were learning to read out of, “Run, Spot, Run,” or something like that. And I read it and so the kindergarten teacher said, “Well, you better take him to the first grade.” So my mother, after about an hour in kindergarten, why we go to first grade. And this story repeats itself. And now I’m in the second grade, but I’m only six years old and the people in second grade are eight years old. And the teacher says, “Well, you could take him into third grade, but I could give him special work if you want to keep him in the second grade because he’s already two years younger than everybody else.” And so they kept me in the second grade and that’s why I graduated from college two years ahead of my time. McJones: Then you spent several years at SMU before the Korean War and several years after? Taylor: And at SMU I was not a serious student, but I had a good time. McJones: You were taking a lot of classes but maybe not as much focus? Taylor: No, I didn’t take very many classes. I mean, I played. I was 16 and away from home for the first time, 500 miles away from home and I loved athletics so I played a lot of sports. I was too small and young and light to make the college teams, but I played lots of intramural sports; football, basketball, softball, stuff like that, and had a good time. But then I went in the Navy and, as Herman Wouk says, CHM Ref: X5059.2009 © 2008 Computer History Museum Page 3 of 74 Oral History of Robert (Bob) Taylor “The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by morons. You want to get along in the Navy, throttle your mind down to a crawl.” You’re not smiling. He actually did say that in “The Caine Mutiny.” No, some other book. Maybe it was “The Caine Mutiny.” And it’s true. So while I was in the Navy I did a lot of reading and got interested in philosophy and science. And so when the Navy period was over and I went back to school, I was a little more serious as a student. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t even have a plan for a career major or anything like that. I was on the GI Bill and I just took courses that I was interested in. I had a job in a research lab as a research assistant as well as the GI Bill, and I could have just stayed there forever as a professional student.
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