Butler Lampson

Who is Butler Lampson?

Butler W. Lampson is a computer scientist.

After graduating from the Lawrenceville School, Lampson received his Bachelor's degree in Physics from Harvard University in 1964, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967.

During the 1960s, Lampson and others were part of Project GENIE at UC Berkeley. In 1965, several Project GENIE members, specifically Lampson and Peter Deutsch, developed the Berkeley Timesharing System for Scientific Data Systems' SDS 940 computer.

Lampson was one of the founding members of Xerox PARC in 1970, where he worked in the Computer Science Laboratory. His now-famous vision of a personal computer was captured in the 1972 memo entitled "Why Alto?". In 1973, the Xerox Alto, with its three-button mouse and full-page-sized monitor was born. It is now considered to be the first actual personal computer.

All the subsequent computers built at Xerox PARC followed a general blueprint called "Wildflower", written by Lampson, and this included the D-Series Machines, the "Dolphin", "Dandelion", "Dandetiger", "Dorado", "Daybreak" Xerox 6085, and "Dragon".