Lynn Conway's Retrospective

Lynn Conway [Draft of 12-30-03.]

Copyright © 1999-2003, Lynn Conway.

All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

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PART III: STARTING OVER

 

Starting over - - "going stealth" - - - settling down in my new life - - - making new friends - - - dating men and having fun - - the effect of the gender transformation is almost like a miracle to me - - - I can finally just be myself, in a body that feels great to be in, and openly love and be loved simply for who I am - -

 

Some nice career successes occur at Memorex - - I begin working as a computer architect again - - - ah, but then project cancellation - - - time to make a big career decision - - - great fortune at joining PARC - - then amazingly - - - being mentored by Bert Sutherland - - - meeting Ivan Sutherland, Carver Mead - - - getting involved in some of the most exciting research going on in computing at the time - - seeing an opportunity for creating new design methods - - - innovating the VLSI system design methods - - - creating a paradigm-shifting VLSI systems textbook - - - getting bolder and more confident in my career, and taking many daring steps along the way - - - and by ten years after my transformation, I'm suddenly on the threshold of career fame - - whether I'm ready for that, is another question - - - because I must live in "stealth mode", and have to worry about losing my career opportunities if I were ever publicly outed - -

 

 

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take -

- Wayne Gretzky

 

 

 

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CONTENTS OF PART III: 5. Starting All Over Again Memorex Corporation Restarting my Engineering Career and my social life The Memorex 7100 The Memorex 30 Team Having Fun The 4004 Appears Project Cancellation! What Next? 6. Xerox PARC The SIERRA Project SIERRA Aftermath Formation of the VLSI System Design Area at PARC The idea of "designing design methods" : the Mead-Conway collaboration But then, what to do with "the methods"? A death in the family The idea of writing "the book" Our secret weapons: the Alto, Ethernet, Laser Printers and Arpanet The crash effort to evolve and propagate the new methods

 

 

PREFACE

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

PART VI

 

 

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The best way to predict the future is to invent it -
- Alan Kay

 

 

 

5. STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN:

 

- - - The late 60's were a remarkable time of new opportunities for women - - - the 50's seemed like a distant past - - - many companies were trying to bring many more women into regular professional positions that had previously been predominantly male-only - - - the period of quotas and affirmative action hadn't arrived yet, so there wasn't much backlash from men - - - after all the numbers of women in most places was still small - - - however, the opportunities were there at just the right time for me - - - especially in the then wide-open field of computer programming - - - in fact, many of the new computer programmers were women who learned their skills "on the job", much as the early webdesigners did in the 90's - - -

 

- - - it was in this dramatically changed context for women at work that I got my first job as a woman at CAI as a programmer - - - a number of other young women had also recently been hired by CAI, and we all became good friends - - - this was great, because it gave me a chance to immediately build a circle of regular gals as friends and buddies - - - for socializing, shopping, and having fun together - - - and this helped me stabilize my life a lot and quickly reduced my feelings of loneliness - - -

 

- - - I worked on one timesharing project at CAI, learning about time-sharing operating systems on the job, and making some useful contributions by figuring out why their stuff wasn't working right - - - once I was making some money again - - - I had moved from San Francisco to a tiny one-room apartment down on the Peninsula in Sunnyvale, and re-entered "the real world" as Lynn Conway - - -

 

- - - CAI was a good stepping stone - - - I was soon recruited with several other women programmers from CAI to go work at Greyhound Time-Sharing (GTS), which was just starting up - - one of my programmer friends at work named Cindy and I decided to get an apartment together as roomates - - - Cindy was a very beautiful, friendly, fun-loving gal and we hit it off great together - - - we found a really nice two-bedroom apartment on Middlefield Road in Mountain View, where we lived together for a couple of years - - - it was a new complex with nice grounds and a swimming pool - - - it felt really great to be in decent housing again - - -

 

GTS was folded later that summer by the parent company, but they were good about it, and we were given some time to look for new jobs this was a huge scare for me - - - I thought good grief, if I can't find a job again, I'm going to lose out after all - - - however, the timing turned out to be quite expedient - - - my headhunter put me onto to a really good job at Memorex Corporation, which I landed in September 1969 - - - finally the darkest days of my early life were now over, and the sun was about to shine a little! - - -

 

 

Memorex Corporation

 

- - - In 1969, memorex was an exciting start-up that had "gone critical" and become a substantial force in the IBM compatible disc-drive business - - they would soon even enter the computer business (small business systems) - - there seemed to be possibilities for an exciting future there - - - although I didn't go into a lot of detail about my work at IBM, my background in system architecture, digital design and simulation work gave me a lot of credibility with the hiring managers and personnel people - - and I got a good offer from them - -

 

- - - and the offer was still there after I informed the personnel department of my medical history, and showed them full documentation regarding what had been done, including a copy of Dr. Julian Pichel's Psychiatric Report - - - that independant psychiatric examination by someone not involved in my case management, and which was supportive without hesistation, was very useful in making the case - - besides, no one at Memorex expressed anything remotely like the concerns that the IBM corporate folks had obsessed about just the year before - - -

 

- - - these were younger folks in a recent start-up company - - - folks who had met me personally, and who simply listened carefully to my detailed explanation of what had happened to me - - - they were used to making up their own minds about things, rather than relying on prevailing prejudgments - - - so I joined Memorex - - - and was soon to begin a really good job, in a really good company - - -

 

 

Restarting my engineering career and my social life

 

- - - but basically, I had to start all over again - - - for one thing, the IBM-ACS project had been so secret that the project itself didn't have an identity among engineers in the valley, much less any work that I'd done there - - - and there wasn't much I could say about what I'd done at IBM anyways, for fear of revealing my gender transition - - - then too, I needed to develop a wide range of new hands-on technical skills in order to work within the fast-paced, start-up type of environment - - - so I had to start all over pretty much from scratch technically, and prove myself all over again, first as a systems programmer, then moving on to work as a digital designer and computer engineer, and then finally getting a chance to work on computer architecture again - - -

 

- - - this wasn't easy and was sometimes pretty scary - - even though I'd had some realistic social and medical/physical experiences when I was 20-22 years old, I was now experiencing a complete and profound new internal and external reality, going through what amounts to a "second puberty" - - by now the overall transformation was bringing on a deluge of new experiences at work, and especially in my personal life and in my own internal physical perceptions and emotional experiences - -

 

- - then, in 1970-71, the case of April Ashley broke into the news - - April was a beautiful English socialite who had been a famous model in the early 60's and who had then married a prominent peer - - however, she had been born a boy from a poor family, and had worked as a female impersonator at Le Carrousel in Paris - - - she had become one of Georges Burou's earliest patients (I understand she was SRS number 6 by Dr Burou in Casablanca on May 12, 1960), and thus was among the first tiny band of transsexual women to undergo modern "sex-change" surgery - - - see recent news article about April - -

 

- - living in stealth mode, April was "outed" in 1970, and her husband's wealthy family forced the case into the divorce courts where the marriage was declared invalid - - the courts even declared that April was "still a man" since she was XY genetically. This case set a disastrous precedent that has affected post-op women in the UK ever since (they are considered by the legal system there to be males, and cannot marry "another man") - - and it terribly frightened me - - - the idea of being "outed" and somehow declared to "be a man" was an unthinkable thing to be avoided at all costs - - so for the following 30 years I almost never talked about my past to anyone other than close friends and a few lovers - - -

 

- - - by '70 I'd only just begun to make some new friends - - - and although I had a few friends to socialize with and gain emotional support from, I still felt withdrawels and loneliness and alienation from the huge transition I'd just gone through - - - I also missed seeing my little girls a lot, but tried not to think about this if at all possible - - - I also found myself slipping in and out of bouts with shyness and social withdrawal because of my terrible fears of being outed - - - however, I worked very, very hard at getting things going, while trying not to make too many mistakes - -

 

- - - having Cindy for a roomate was wonderful, because we could go shopping, go out socializing, and do a lot of fun things together - - - she helped me grow out of my shyness more and more - - - and within a couple of years after SRS, I was settling into my new life pretty comfortably - -

 

- - - my career also took a great turn for the better when in '71, after a successing of increasingly more responsible positions at Memorex, I was selected as processor architect for a new small business computer system - - the Memorex 30 - - -

 

 

The Memorex 7100 Processor

 

- - - the Memorex 7100 processor for Memorex 30 System, a new low-end model for Memorex's line of computers - - - aimed at competing with IBM's System 3 - - -

 

- - - Milt Gregory pulled together and led the matrixed project team - - - the fast development cycle - - my initial architectural ideas - - this was to be a lean, mean, low-cost, no-frills machine - - - the use of a simulator to cohere the design - - our effort to get on top of all the newest parts due out from various suppliers - - - in 9 months we went from blank piece of paper to a working manufacturing prototype - - a microprogrammed processor in TTL technology - -

 

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The Memorex 30 Team:

 

Milt Gregory, Tony Miller, Lynn Conway, Roger Stallman, Gary Yee, Bob Peterson, Al Hemel, Dick Hoenle, Bob Holland, Don Pesavento, Glenn Ewart, Dick Chueh, Barbara Baird

 

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- - - this project developed into a wonderful group experience - - with a great bunch of people who were fun to work with, and who were really sweet to me - - - I learned a lot on this project about hands-on engineering of real products - - what the digital designer's life in the trenches was really like - - - and I really enjoyed the exciting team-effort aspect of the project - - - Milt was a great leader, and I learned a lot about team leadership by watching how he did things - - - also, late in the effort, the team worked with Barb Baird to produce a manual documenting the design - - fortunately, I still have a copy - - -

 

 

Memorex 30 manufacturing prototype [ 7100 processor ]   1972

 

- - at this point, things were going great - - I was making excellent money, and was accepted as a senior technical peer by leading engineers in the company - - - I'd also gained confidence as a technical project leader, while guiding the processor development portion of the overall project - - - and in 1971 I was promoted to Senior Staff Engineer - -

 

Having Fun

 

- - - I bought a nice little condo in Los Gatos in '72 - - - conveniently located at 420 Alberto Way (#25), near to downtown - - - by now my past troubles had sort of melted away, and my inner perceptual, emotional and physical setting had settled down and stabilized into its wonderful new form - - - I'd also made significant gains in social adventurousness, and was freely enjoying an active social life - - - I traded in my old Volkswagen Beetle on a new '72 Datsun 240Z - - - it was red with a white interior; what a car! - - - that thing helped propel me further into some wonderful new experiences - - -

 

 

Lynn's Datsun 240Z in front of her condo building, in 1972.

 

 

- - - I loved dancing to rock & roll, rhythm & blues, and country music at the roadhouses like "Cowtown" down in San Jose - - - and barhopping in general - - - I was now dating men regularly - - I got started by frequenting the various singles bars and by using the then-new "computer dating services" - - - and from time to time I began having really wild fun - - the surgery had finally released me to fully enjoy lovemaking - - I could wrap my legs around a man and make love with wild abandon - - without elaborate preparations, without fear, shame or embarrassment, and without hiding anything - - - and my body was now beautifully soft and rubbery, and sweetly sensitive and responsive to a man's touch, due to the female hormones - - - my god, what joy this brought me - - -

 

- - - I also now had two beautiful Siamese cats , Samantha and Rapunzel - - I've always loved cats, and these two sweet little critters were to be my faithful companions for many, many years into the future (Sams lived to be 21 and Punzel lived to age 23!) - - -

 

From this point on, my personal life was much like that of any other single woman in her mid-thirties, full of the same challenges and rewards that lively women of that age experience. For many years I dated regularly, and usually had a couple of somewhat steady boyfriends with whom to share interests and have fun - - - here are some photos from this period:

 

Lynn in her '72 Datsun 240-Z   1973

 

 

Lynn at a car show 1973

 

 

Lynn's roomate Cindy 1971

 

 

 

The 4004 Appears

 

- - in 1971 something very significant happened in the valley - - - the Intel 4004 appeared and soon began to get into all sorts of applications - - a blockbuster event for digital system designers - - I talked to anybody who knew anything about it - - took short intensive courses at Santa Clara University - - tried to find out what was going on - - the processor was very simple architecturally - - - but the design details and process were very unclear - - do architects have to know anything about LSI to do this stuff? - - apparently not - - it's a big team effort involving architects, logic designers, circuit designers and layout designers - - - it's complex and costly to design, even for such a simple processor? - - - but makes sense if there's lots of applications because it's so inexpensive to replicate - - -

 

 

Photomicrograph of the Intel 4004 chip - the first microprocessor

 

 

Project Cancellation

 

- - - but then there are rumblings - - business problems - - - gads, the MRX 30 project is canceled! - - - not only that, but Memorex announces that it's getting out of the computer business - - - this was a terrible disappointment - - I felt like I had the flu for the next month - - - now what to do? - - - we went into hold mode for a while, and then there were layoffs - - I survived those, but finally couldn't see a future at Memorex - -

 

What Next?

 

- - What to do? - - - I had to get a grip on things and decide what to do next - - - I finally signed up a headhunter and went looking for a microprocessor to architect! - - heck, why not? - - there were very few folks in the valley at the time who knew how to do computer architecture - - - so I'd guessed that those architects already doing the microprocessors didn't know much about the underlying technology either - - -

 

- - - this proved to be a good guess - - - I interviewed with and got a great offer from Fairchild - - - but then my headhunter mentioned that Xerox had started a new research outfit in Palo Alto that might be interesting - - I went to check it out - - - I could hardly believe what I saw on that interview trip - - PARC in 1973 was already an astounding place - - the mission - - the people - - the computing environment - - the special feeling of a different, exotic technical culture - - - I got an excellent offer from Xerox - - - and the offer was still on the table after I'd fully informed the personnel manager about my past history, using all my medical documentation plus Dr. Pichel's Report - - -

 

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Note: By 1973, transsexualism was much more widely known about than in '68, especially in the Bay Area. In the five years since I'd been fired by IBM, Dr. Benjamin's book had had a great impact in the medical community. Stanford University Medical Center in particular had started an exploratory program in the late 60's to evaluate transsexual cases and to develop standard protocols for treatment. The program resulted from knowledge of successful cases, including mine, that Dr. Benjamin had diagnosed and then guided on through SRS and transition in the 60's.

 

Back in 1968, I'd been among the first few hundred U. S. citizens to undergo SRS, and almost all of them had gone abroad for their surgery. The majority were entertainers, sex-trade workers, and others who could pass and find marginal work as women back then. That's why there hadn't been any precedents for IBM's corporate response to my transition. Such a thing just hadn't happened before in IBM, or in any other major corporation that they knew about, and there was no script for handling the situation.

 

However, during the late 60's as Dr. Benjamin's work became known, many more transsexuals sought medical help. According to Dr. Benjamin, by 1973 almost 2500 Americans had undergone the change - - - and with each passing year a higher percentage were educated and professional women who were able to maintain some degree of career success afterwards - - - by then the Stanford efforts were generally known about by the public in the Bay Area, having received occasional news attention - - this started to open folks minds to the idea that there was a rare gender-transition disorder that an elite organization such as Stanford took seriously, and wanted to study and help - - - it's possible that this Stanford involvement in treatment of transsexuals helped sway the Xerox personnel department in my favor during the hiring process there - - - I kept in touch with Dr. Benjamin for many years after my transition, usually seeing him for a lunch or dinner at least once each summer when he was in San Francisco. It was wonderful to be able to share in his happiness in knowing that his work was having a lot of impact and helping many desperate people, and that he would eventually be recognized as an great medical pioneer.

 

- - - I did get another big scare during the summer of '76 when Renee Richards, a then recently post-op transsexual, was "outed" by national media (her story is documented in her '83 book, Second Serve). A huge controversy raged about her playing in tennis competitions as a woman, and people made fun of her as they had of Christine Jorgensen years before - - - even more so in Richard's case because she was very strange-looking (unfortunately for her she had very masculine facial features) - - - I feared the highly publicized controversy would cause me to be scrutinized more closely by colleagues, and that I might possibly be outed then too - - that didn't happen, but my old fears were surfaced again and held me back from being more "out front" and in the public eye as my VLSI work became successful several years later - - -

 

- - - medical progress continued, and by 1979 Stanford had developed the protocols that have been used to this day for TS case management and gatekeeping to SRS - - By the late '80's, the numbers of cases being processed in the U.S. rose up to its current, ongoing level of about 1500 cases per year going through MtF SRS. Perhaps another 500 or so go outside the U.S. for their surgery. That's a tiny number when spread around such a large country; however, it's still a lot of people who must undergo a frightening, painful and often desperate struggle to have any chance at a real life.

 

By the year 2000, there were approximately 60,000 people in the U.S. who had undergone SRS (MtF or FtM). The vast majority were in stealth in their new lives, and simply blend in unnoticed among the rest of society.

 

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- - - now I had a very important decision to make - - - should I take the offer from Fairchild to do their next microprocessor architecture? Or join Xerox in Palo Alto to do research on special purpose architectures for image processing? - - - so many factors were in play in this decision - - - both seemed like outstanding opportunities - - - but the desire to work in an exciting, creative research environment again, as I had at IBM-ACS, finally drew me to Xerox - -

 

- - - there had been big turning points in my life before - - and here was another one - - I faced a decision point - - - going from a place of comfortable career success and an increasingly active, happy social life - - to dropping into the intellectual supercooker that was Xerox PARC - - a place of unlimited possibilities for creative expression - - - but at a price of all-consuming work for quite a few years - -

 

- - - it's hard to say whether the eventual price was too high, or not - - shouldn't I have stepped back, and considered more closely all the wonderful new alternatives that were now fully open to me in life? - - - why did I only consider the two major career opportunities? - - -

 

- - - was it fear of financial insecurity? - - - this had been a big source of anxiety all during my transition, because of the huge unreimbursed medical expenses and also the expenses for supporting Kelly and Tracy - - -

 

- - - or was it a lack of confidence in the future for my personal life? - - - although I was feeling really good about myself and enjoying life - - - I had a growing realization that while some men liked to date and enjoy intimate fun with transsexual women, who are often very passionate partners, few men would knowingly take a TS woman for a wife due to social stigmatization - - -

 

- - - I'd begun to worry that although I could have a fun social life and sex life, I might not be able find a mate to share life with - - - I'd learned that once you were emotionally involved with someone, in fairness you had to tell them about the past - - and in most cases you'd then either lose them or the relationship would shift into a different and less-serious phase - - after having this happens to you several times, you can get a bit burned out and tend to give up on love and just settle for less meaningful affairs with men who "don't know" - - - this has always been a big quandary for TS women (although things gradually became a lot better by the 90's as the condition became less stigmatized) - - -

 

- - - or was it a kind of overcompensation, the need to make enough contributions to society to counterbalance in the minds of others their potential reactions to my past? - - - such overcompensation is common among post-op TS's - - - a lingering result of very low self-esteem, in spite of any later successes, going all the way back to the humiliation and derision I faced in my early years right on thru to my firing by IBM - - -

 

- - - or was making creative contributions a substitute for being unable to bear children (this is a sensitive topic that I don't like to dwell on - - to this day it can bring tears - - especially because of the forced loss of all contact with little Kelly and Tracy, who had seemed like my own babies to me at the time of my transition) - - -

 

- - - or was it that, in addition to everything else, I had a wild passion for the life of the creative mind too? - - - who knows - - but the decision was made, and on I went to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center - - - and a period of intense focus on my research career - - -

 

[return to Contents]

 

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6. XEROX PALO ALTO RESEARCH CENTER (PARC)

 

The SIERRA Project

 

At Xerox, I initially reported to Mike Wilmer, in PARC's Systems Sciences Laboratory (SSL), to work on a special purpose system architecture for image processing - - the target application was to try to create a compound OCR/FAX system - - - the "Sierra project" - - - I innovated a cool, though on reflection somewhat bizarre, architecture for this system - - -

 

- - - after considerable toying around with various image processing variants - - - Jorge Hernandez and I design and build a particular hardware prototype - - I conduct extensive simulation explorations of the OCR methods in parallel with hardware design - - we get the thing running - - it really works! - - and in later retrospect, I gained many important meta-architectural insights from this experience - -

 

- - - but we began to take flak from folks in the Computer Science lab (CSL), who sniped at this project for being too complex and costly - - - I don't think the presentations I gave about Sierra in "Dealer" were very effective either, and that didn't help - - I was still shy enough to get a bit sweaty, and verbally hesitant, when talking in front of a group - - I was in awe of what the CSL team had accomplished with the Alto and the new form of distributed computing environment at PARC - - - under the visionary leadership of Bob Taylor - - - I hoped to get their respect - - but it wasn't to be based on Sierra - - - it was gradually dawning on me too that even with major re-engineering, any Sierra product prototypes would be way too costly at the time - - -

 

- - - about this time, in late '74 or early '75, we got a new lab manager in SSL - - - his name was Bert Sutherland - - - I recall a critical meeting with Bert, where I presented the Sierra architecture to him and to his consultant, the famous computer architect Wes Clark - - - my impression was that Bert and Wes thought I'd done some interesting (and certainly different!) architectural work - - - hmm, would this mean that Sierra could continue? - - -

 

- - - I was pretty happy about how things were going for me outside of work at the time - - - I'd was doing lots of fun things, including making backpack trips to the Sierra Nevada again - - -

 

- - - I found that it was easy to meet some nice guys by getting involved again in hiking and backpacking - - - it was a great way to go on long dates and have something special to share with your partner - - - and since there were more guys than gals involved in those sports back then, it helped improve the odds of meeting someone nice - - -

 

- - - I was hoping to continue combining a fun personal life with reasonable career success at Xerox - - - but the Sierra project at Xerox was just too great a technical reach at the time to be commercially feasible, given the low density and high cost of the many components it would take to build it - - - and it wasn't long before Bert canceled the project! - -

 

 

Lynn in 1975, on a backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevada with a boyfriend, gets ready for a day of hiking and peak climbing (shown here near Ragged Peak).

 

 

Lynn at a tent site on the approach to Mount Ritter and Banner Peak,

while on another backpack trip with a boyfriend, in 1975.

 

 

SIERRA Aftermath

 

- - - this cancellation of Sierra was very unsettling - - as a system architect and designer this was the third major project canceled out from under me - - also, I wasn't sure how to save my image within the competitive PARC environment - - - given this "failure", I figured I was probably doomed to be an underdog there - - -

- - - about this time, I had moved in order to be closer to Xerox PARC. I'd been driving my 240Z on mostly windy back roads from Los Gatos to Palo Alto to get to work, and although it was a fun drive, it was very time-consuming. With a now-secure position, I was able to afford a nice little home at 1538 Winding Way in Belmont, CA. It was high on a hill overlooking the bay - - - and the drive to PARC was shorter and was against the main traffic and thus a lot easier - - - this would turn out to be my cozy home during the period of intense work ahead at PARC - - - although right now I worried that this would be a repeat of my experience at Memorex, where I'd just bought a condo and then changed jobs to a location a lot further away - - -

 

- - what a roller-coaster ride - - I was feeling pretty low about my work right now - - although in retrospect this was, and still is, a very common experience for high-tech workers in Silicon Valley, so I shouldn't have taken it so hard - - many folks spend their entire careers there, and never really "pick a winner" - - never become part of a really successful project that makes it to market and succeeds there - - -

 

- - however, I couldn't have guessed what an incredible intellectual adventure was just around the corner - - and what a great research leader and wonderful personal mentor Bert Sutherland would turn out to be - - -

 

- - - I owe Bert Sutherland so much for everything I've accomplished since then - - -

 

- - Bert introduced me and my PARC colleague Doug Fairbairn to his brother Ivan Sutherland, and to Carver Mead, at Caltech - - Ivan and Carver were investigating the longer-term potential of MOS-LSI - - - Carver had a device physics background, and had done extremely important theoretical work on determining the likely fundamental gate size limits for MOSFETs - - his theoretical lower limits were amazingly small - - Ivan had estimated and articulated the possible opportunity space that such limits opened up for computer system designers - - but also, given his deep background in system design, computer graphics and CAD, Ivan raised the key question of how would architects cope with the complexity of such very large scale designs - -

 

Formation of the VLSI System Design Area at PARC

 

Doug and I team up - - as Bert Sutherland then forms the new "LSI Systems Area" (later to be called the VLSI Design Area) in his lab to "explore LSI design methods and tools" - - this was a big step for me, as I became responsible as Area Manager - - gads, was I really ready for this? - - - I begin recruiting - - and Doug and I begin lots of interactions with Carver and his students - - -

Photo of Lynn from the 1977 Xerox Annual Report

 

- - - Carver had important Intel connections, having been a consultant there since the early 70's - - and based on his Intel experiences, he began teaching courses at Caltech on the then current Intel methods for MOS-LSI circuit and layout design, including examples of ALU designs, etc., the sort of designs actually being used in the new Intel microprocessors - -

 

- - - Carver's courses were totally unique at the time - - there were no other university course anywhere that taught students how to implement this level of logical functions into MOS-LSI layouts - - - Carver also had access to Intel's and other's fab lines, where occasional "test chips" could be dropped in for processing, so some student projects could occasionally be fabricated - - - but even though his students did more of the overall design themselves - - and thus were often more efficient in prototype design productions than existing industry teams - - - Carver could see that no knowledge then existed to deal with the eventual complexity of designs as chip technology moved towards his theorized ultimate limits of density - -

 

- - - Doug and I learn about all this stuff from Carver - - and do some preliminary LSI chip designs ourselves - - - Carver was a real character, very charismatic, and very passionate about the potential of MOS-LSI - - he wanted to get more system designers interested in it, especially given the work he'd done with Ivan that revealed the eventual potential of the technology - - he just didn't understand why there wasn't more support for research into the design aspects of LSI - - - so he became very excited by our enthusiasm as we got more involved - - he was also wowed by the amazing computing environment at PARC (the Alto's, ethernet, laser printers, etc.) and the possibilities that this then-unique environment presented - -

 

- - it seems strange now that almost no computer architects had paid any attention to Carver before - - perhaps the idea of working at the layout level, or even having to know anything about layouts, seemed beneath most architects - - this may have been a combination of looking down on the slowness of MOS technologies vs the bipolar ECL technologies, and a holdover effect from the old pMOS metal gate days, when "only peons worked on layouts", cutting rubies, etc. - - - "after all, the architect could just hand-off an RTL-level design to be implemented into logic, and the rest was all optimizeable at each level by the different specialists, wasn't it?" - - -

 

- - - how could these architects have known that by exploiting Robert Bower's invention of the self-aligned gate and the new ion-implantation techniques, the emerging nMOS (and later CMOS) technology was now a totally different beast, and full of architectural promise - - especially since it got faster and faster as it scaled down towards the limits that Carver had calculated - - -

 

- - in contrast, Doug and I had no such past preconceptions against learning about the details of MOS technology and circuit layout - - we were just so amazed to be able to get at MOS-LSI, and design things in it, that we jumped in and learned about it as fast as we could - - from Carver, from his students, from taking short courses in all sorts of related areas (such two or three day "intensives" were a key method for knowledge transfer in the Valley in those days) - - - ( one of these courses was an intensive on charge transfer devices given by Carlo Sequin, a CCD pioneer from Bell Labs who'd just joined the faculty at U. C. Berkely - - Carlo turned out to be an important partner in our later efforts ) - - - and we learned quickly by doing more and more design ourselves - -

 

- - - with Bert's encouragement, Doug and Jim Rowson, one of Carver's students, began work on the design and programming of a graphical LSI layout system on the Xerox Alto - - this creation of new forms of software tools for the Alto became the early important rationale within Xerox PARC for the LSI Systems Area's research - - this long served as a "cover story" - - and was, for example, sort of tolerated by CSL (we were finding new uses for the Alto) - - even as our work later expanded out, bootstrapping to impact the wider arena - -

 

- - - having designed digital logic in everything from relays, to vacuum tubes, to discrete transistors, to SSI, to MSI-TTL, the move to MOS design was yet another familiar technology transition exercise for me - - probably like learing a new language for some folks - - and, being experienced at multiple levels of design (physical, circuit, logic, architecture), I studied hard to understand those levels in nMOS-LSI too - -

 

- - curiously, there also seemed to be a lot going on in the Intel designs that wasn't directly stratified in traditional architectural, logic, circuit and layout levels of design - - - this reminded me of ACS, where much of the actual knowledge at the hybridized interfaces of architecture, logic-design and circuit design were not formally codified in current "texts" - - this further complicated things - - there were a lot of hybrid structures reminiscent of the relay switching circuits I'd studied in Caldwell's book on "Switching Circuits and Logical Design" at Columbia - - - was there some way to taxonomize, classify, exploit and simplify all this stuff? - -

 

The idea of "designing design methods": the Mead-Conway collaboration

- - then, reflecting on my earlier ACS design process efforts, I began to sense some very weird possibilities - - - given Carver's theories about the ultimate scaling limits - - perhaps MOS-LSI really could open up the room for system architects to finally realize their "architectural dreams" - - not just the usual workstation or minicomputer scale of machines - - - but for grand things like I'd experienced in the superscalar and image processing architectures - - and actually get them economically implemented - - but this could only happen if more digital system architects knew how to think about designing in that medium - - and had a faster, less expensive way to do it than to involve an entire team of specialists (i.e., logic designers, circuit designers, layout designers, process designers) for each chip design - -

 

- - - again, recalling my logic design standardization effort at ACS, and the "designing the ACS design process" proposal - - where I had viewed a "design level" as subject to redesign, even to rather significant paradigmatic change - - I began to recall and reflect on the Steinmetz and Shannon precedents - -

 

- - - especially Charles Steinmetz, who was one of my true long-time heroes - - the immigrant and social underdog - - - who, in spite of a major physical handicap, rose to technical prominence at the great General Electric Company - - who single-handedly had generated, shaped and channeled knowledge about AC phenomena, via his symbolic mathematical methods, so that the average engineer could work with AC - - his methods, taught at Union College, in Schenectady, NY were largely responsible for a huge wave of progress in the electrical industry - - it seemed as if we were now at the threshold of something similar, a similar opportunity and challenge - -

 

- - - reflecting on that past history - - - and on how Carver had been trying to proselytize current expert architects into becoming LSI practitioners "by example", i.e., by using existing, evolving methods, and creating examples of new, rather clean architectures quickly designed by small teams - - I just didn't see how that form of proselytizing would work - - - it would only impact in an ad-hoc manner over a long period of time - -

 

- - - not only that, but I think we all intuitively perceived that many more possible system architectures could be created and be cost-effective in MOS-LSI than previously thought - - - thus it would take many, many more architects to explore and do this all this new stuff - -

 

- - - so we couldn't rely on existing"advanced computer architects" - - but needed lots more "regular digital system designers" for all kinds of new systems in VLSI - - so it didn't make sense to try to just win over existing architects to do LSI - - - there wouldn't be enough of them - - somehow what was needed were methods to create lots of new system architects - - from scratch - - so, again, the Steinmetz story comes to mind - -

 

- - - I suggested to Carver that we deliberately design new, simplified MOS-LSI design methods, deliberately aimed at not just the current expert digital system architect - - but more directly at even the "budding, novice architect" - - making it so easy to get started that more of them would try it, and work from architecture all the way to the layout level - - Carver later coined the term "the tall thin person" for this "new type of VLSI system designer" - - - Doug and Jim could help forge new computer-aided design tools to support this new sort of designer - -

 

- - my idea was to deliberately distill and recompose from all available nMOS logic, circuit and layout design methods the simplest hybridized methods possible that would let a digital system architect (for example, a Conway) jump right in and do a whole system design from top to bottom - - i.e., the sort of thing that folks like Lynn Conway would really liked to have learned back when she first heard about the 4004 - - -

 

- - - and also to adjust various viewpoints about "just what a chip design was" - - getting it into 2-D overview needed for the architect, rather than always focusing on 3-D cross-sections for circuit details, and non-topologically-relevant logic-gate diagrams traditionally used for logic design - - when shifting from bipolar to MOS technologies, we could bring back echoes of useful design thought-styles from relay switching-circuits and vacuum tube circuits - - simplifying ideas - -

 

- - thus a shared vision began to develop in our team - - not just Carver's original "theory about eventual ultimate limits" and "the challenge of complexity" - - but my vision and approach on how to "deal with complexity through deliberate methodological simplifications" - - - and my concepts of how to craft simplifications that had a good impedance match with the knowledge base of the average digital designer of that time - - - we would create a new "VLSI design methodology" - - -  

 

One of the great heroes of the early days of electrical engineering:   Charles Steinmetz   His development of a symbolic method of calculating alternating current (AC) phenomena, simplified an extremely complicated field, understood by few, so that the average engineer could work with AC.   This accomplishment was largely responsible for the rapid progress made in the commercial introduction of AC apparatus.

 

- - - well, just what did this VLSI design methodology begin to consist of? - - - my idea was to initially only teach potential designers about a very small key subset of available LSI logic, circuit and layout methods - - - a key subset that would cover the design of any digital system or computing structure - - - a key subset that was internally simple, elegant, and easy to teach to the existing digital design community - - -

 

- - - we would use only simple two-phase clocking - - - use simple dynamic registers - - - teach basics at the circuit level to enable transistor ratio calculations, delay calculations, establish fan-out rules, driving of large loads, etc. - - exploit pass-gate logic in various classic architectural building-blocks - - - use PLA's for any messy logic and for control logic - - - use "stick diagrams" for initial system cells to layout conceptual designs - - establish system-level structures of register to register data paths, often with pass-gate logic between register arrays - - with control lines perpendicular to the data paths - - current density limitations - - power calculations - -

 

- - thinking about stick diagrams - - I pondered the difficulty and computational complexity of trying to instantiate layouts using typical layout design rules - - this was especially a problem when using personal workstation-based graphics-layout tools like Icarus - - - then I hit on the idea of using simple, scalable design rules - - these became known as the so-called "lambda rules" - - - this innovation greatly simplified the conceptualization of chip layouts - - - and also dramatically reduced the computational complexity of the layout descriptions - - -

 

- - - Carver really liked the scalable design rules idea - - - he helped refine some line width and spacing ratios, based on estimates of future nMOS process evolution - - to make the rules a bit more optimal and hopefully more "acceptable" - - - we ended up with a just two pages of very basic, easy to understand design rules, whereas most processes had about 30 pages with all sorts of arcane stuff in them - -

 

Plate 2. Mead-Conway Scalable nMOS Layout Design Rules

 

 

Plate 3. Mead-Conway Scalable nMOS Layout Design Rules (cont.)

 

- - - however, these "non-optimal" rules later became very controversial, and caused considerable backlash from establishment figures who didn't seem to recognize the issues of computational complexity, teachability, and time-to-design tradeoffs that we were concentrating on - - designs created under these rules looked so "clean and simple" that they at first looked like "toys" to establishment folks who didn't understand what we were doing - - - interestingly, the rules gave up much less in area than most critics initially guessed - -

 

- - but the new design rules also opened up an important new opportunity - - we could get access to various fab lines by varying only one basic parameter, the length unit lambda, for a given layout design - - we all worked to tabulate and simplify the other factors at the fab line interface - - - and Carver went on a quest to interact with all his contacts to set up cleaner interfaces to a number of different fab lines, so as to increase the opportunities for finding fab for student projects - -

 

- - - Carver coined the term "foundry" for a line that can be accessed in the new "clean way", i.e., simple logistical interface, standard ways to prescribe mask polarities and alignment marks, simple scaling of the lambda design rules, etc.- - and importantly, one definitely need not jointly design and spec a process for each particular chip design - -

 

- - - the term foundry later became very controversial - - - it really bugged lots of people, who didn't like it's apparent dethroning of fab as the end-all, be-all of chipmaking - - (note: the term is now in everyday use in the semiconductor industry) - - Carver always had a way of bringing notice to himself ,and to our work, by confronting traditionalists with what seemed to be rather outrageous claims, and with inventive, but slightly offensive, new terminology! - - Carver was always memorable! - - -

 

- - - Mead's growing interest in VLSI computer architecture: It's interesting, given his background in device physics and circuit design, Carver became extremely interested in computer architecture, and wanted to "do it" himself - - - whereas I, with my background in computer architecture, became extremely interested in meta-architectural issues of selecting and reconstructing the lower-level and mid-level zones of VLSI design to make them into a "kit of parts that was more accessible to architects" - - - we both seemed to want to learn and master what we already didn't know much about - - to each of us the other area "seemed cooler", at the time - -

 

- - - therefore, in parallel with my obsessing on the design methods at PARC, Carver focused intense energy on the architecture and design of LSI microprocessors, the so-called "OM machines", at Caltech - - - collaborating with his student Dave Johannsen - - on a new machine, the OM-2 - - - OM-2 was just starting up just as we finalized details of the design methodology - - - Carver and Dave and several other students carried out the design - -

 

- - - fortunately, Carver was able to impose the new design methodology being worked out at PARC on the OM-2 - - as a result, the OM2 and all its detailed subsystems later became usable as the classic microprocessor design example for Mead-Conway text - - - somehow when conveying the methods to the OM2 team, Carver didn't mention they were my idea - - - and when I visited Caltech later, OM2 team members excitedly told me how they were using "Carver design rules" as though I'd never heard about them, much less invented them - - -

 

- - - this caused a big flap between Carver and me, but didn't resolve the issue - - - and "who was I" anyways - - and we entered a phase where I got innovative ideas and "worked them up in the back room" while he played famous professor out on the public stage flaming about our results - - - it was actually OK in a way - - after all, he was already famous, knew tons of key people and could open any door - - - while I was less credentialed and had "a past" that needed to be closely guarded - - - we were uneasy but incredibly productive collaborators, each playing our respective roles in doing amazing things we couldn't have done otherwise - -

 

The OM2: A microprocessor data path designed using the Mead-Conway methods and layout design rules

 

- - discuss the concepts of cells and subsystems - - - the new intermediate level of architectural building blocks - - thinking back to ACS and Sierra - - moving up from gates and F/F's - - - to subsystems instantiated in 2-D from cells - - -

 

- - - meantime, Doug Fairbairn and Jim Rowson got the ICARUS layout system running on the Xerox ALTO workstations - - it was simple in structure, very fast and quite effective - - it exploited the newly simplified design methodology - - they created a tutorial on how it was put together - - it is now clear that their pioneering work on ICARUS ultimately triggered the evolution of a whole range of new forms of CAD tools - - setting the EDA industry off into an entirely new direction - -

 

But then, what to do with "the methods"?

 

- - - then all of a sudden, a remarkable transition occurred - - - going over and over the simple collection of methods we now mainly used for most designs - - and bit by bit compressing the amount of material needed - - - I realized that "wow, we've got it", i.e., we really had figured out and proven out in a major design trial an extremely simple, but fully workable, covering methodology adequate for nMOS digital system design - - - this was no longer just a dream, a vision that we were passionately pursuing - - we'd actually got it! - - -

 

- - -ah, but now we had a completely new kind of problem - - - what the heck could we do with all this stuff - - this tiny group of collaborators at PARC and Caltech - - - should we write papers? - - - but who'd ever publish them? - -

 

- - - I mentally wrestled with this frustrating problem - - I could see the reactions to any claims we might make - - after all, "who were we" - - - or more particularly, "who was Lynn Conway, this woman who only had an MSEE and who no one had ever heard of before, to be telling the industry how to do digital electronics design?" - - - the situation required that we come up with some "very strong methods" for even getting our results in front of folks for widespread evaluation - - much less into acceptance, and use - - - I reflected again on the past and looked for analogous situations - - and recalled Steinmetz' propagation of the symbolic methods in courses at Union College - - I thought a lot about what had happened there - - -

 

- - - and then I thought about Dr. Benjamin's 1966 paradigm-shifting medical textbook - - - and how he had packaged a collection of avant-garde but serious research results not into scattered journal papers, but into a comprehensive, compelling, tutorial textbook that had changed lots of minds about his ideas - - -

 

A death in the family

 

- - - in the middle of all the growing intellectual excitement at work, I got an urgent phone call from my brother - - our mother had suffered a sudden relapse of the lymphoma cancer she had thought she'd licked years before - - she was in the hospital in Austin, Texas, and wanted to see me - - he asked if I could come down for a day to help cheer her up - - -

 

- - - I'd seen my mother only a couple of times since my transition - - - our relations were very strained, because she'd never accepted my gender transformation - - - she just wouldn't let go of her "son" and embrace her daughter - - - no matter how much my physical appearance and outward personality had morphed, she still managed to see the "old" me in there somewhere, and she still made mistakes with pronouns and with my first name - - - however, I went to Austin anyways, out of concern for someone who was now possibly in deep trouble - -

 

- - - my brother met me at the airport and we went to the hospital together - - - it was a tearful reunion, at least for for my mother - - - she didn't look well, and she kept saying "I'm frightened", over and over again - - - there wasn't much I could say, though I tried to calm her - - - it quickly became clear that this was not a cheer-up visit; this was to be the last time I'd see her alive - -

 

Lynn in 1977

 

 

- - - at one point she began looking at me very carefully - - right in the face and eyes - - I was a bit surprised, because she would never really look right at me during our earlier meetings - - then after a while, she said "you're beautiful, so beautiful", with kind of a quizzical, questioning feeling to it - - - I wondered what the heck she meant by that! - - - was she finally waking up to the fact that something truly profound had happened to me nine years ago? - - - and that it wasn't realistic to keep thinking that she had two sons anymore, but had a son and a daughter instead? - - who knows - - -

 

- - - after I'd been there quite a while, I noticed there hadn't been any other visitors - - that seemed strange since we had lots of relatives living in the area - - - I asked my brother about it and found out why - - - my mother had warned them all that this was the day "I" would be there, so that they could avoid the terrible embarrassment of "having to see Robert dressed as a woman" - - -

 

- - - I'm not sure what they expected would embarrass them so - - it reminded me of the way the senior execs at IBM had reacted - - - namely, to an imagined stereotype, rather than to a real human being who was actually a rather nice person if you took the time to get to know her - - -

 

- - when it came time to leave and say our goodbye's - - my mother said "please, please stay, I'm so afraid" - - I said that I was sorry, but I had to go - - - that I had a plane to catch - - I told a small white lie, saying that maybe I could fly back again soon - - but of course that wouldn't happen, since all the others would be there till the end came - - - as it did a few days later - - - and I wasn't invited to the funeral .

 

- - - I was so used to such treatment by this time that none of it caused any emotional stir in me - - no shame, no hurt, no anger, no tears, no nothing - - - it was as if I were watching a familiar movie scene - - - the unfolding scene became just more "ethnographic data" to be filed and referenced at a later time - - - yet another record of oft-encountered "transphobic" behaviors - - - I felt like an observer of events that I wasn't even personally involved in, and was just going through the motions - - -

 

- - - This notion that "It's all just data" - - - that all these behaviors and interactions were useful things to document as ethnographic data about gender transitions - - - made events that would otherwise felt very hurtful seem to be "interesting observations" instead - - - there was no need to assign blame for what happened one way or the other - - - these were all just "natural side-effects of a gender transition" - - -

 

- - - this way of looking at things came from my studies in anthropology - - - I began to feel that maybe all these "observations" would prove useful someday - - - in the meantime, this mental trick proved very useful in easing the natural pain I felt in such situations - - -

 

- - - Anyways, I'd already lost my mother when I was four years old - - -

 

 

The idea of writing "the book"

 

- - - in a meeting at PARC with Carver, Doug, Jim and few other folks in the late spring of '77, it was late in the day; we were tired, and kidding around and winding things down - - I had finally hit on a specific idea, and I just said it out loud: "Let's write a book on the new methods!" - - - "a book that looks like the kind of textbook you might see after such methods had been used for many years and were all proven out in practice - - full of design examples, etc." - - to my surprise, Carver instantly said "Yeah!", very, very loudly - - and that was it: we set off to do "The Book" - - thus another of "Lynn's wild projects" was about to take off - - -

 

- - during the summer of '77 and on into early '78 Lynn, Carver, Doug, Jim, Bob Sproull, Dick Lyon, and Carlo Sequin all teamed up to help brainstorm about, create and test this book - - this was an incredibly talented set of folks, and we really infected each other with our mutual excitement about the work - - - a series of versions were written and tried in preliminary courses - - the first three chapters in a course taught by Carlo at U.C. Berkeley - - then the first 5 chapters (including the OM-2 design examples) in a course by Bob Sproull at CMU - - - at this point we decided to change the title from Introduction to LSI Systems to Introduction to VLSI Systems - - just about that time I'd seen "VLSI" as an acronym a couple of times in Electronics Magazine, and thought it would add the right additional flair to the title - - we still called my PARC group the LSI System Area for a while, but we'd change that a bit later too - -

 

- - I'd recruited Dick Lyon by then, and he began collaborating with Bob Sproull to formally define the layout design interchange format that came to be known as "CIF2.0" - - an extremely critical element in establishing linkages among all the various design and fabrication tools - - Dick is a brilliant and creative researcher, and would go on to invent the optical mouse chip, invent a complete bit-serial VLSI design methodology for signal processing applications, extend the scalable design rules to CMOS, etc., etc. - -

 

- - we'd also recruited Barbara Baird, who had been the secretary for the 7100 team at Memorex, to be the administrative assistant in the new LSI Systems Area - - Barb would prove to be an absolutely key member of the team during the critical periods ahead - -

 

Our secret weapons: the Alto, Ethernet, Laser Printers and Arpanet

 

- - - our secret weapons in rapidly writing and evolving the textbook were the Alto computers, laser printers, and Arpanet access at PARC - - - I did most of the writing and editing of the emerging text on my Alto - - receiving input from Carver at Caltech re the OM-2 - - and exchanging drafts, doing editing, and collaborating with an ever increasing number of contacts at other places, using e-mail and file transfers via the Arpanet - - this infrastructure: the Alto personal computers, ethernet and laser printers at PARC, Arpanet, e-mail, etc., way back in '77, was very similar in effectiveness to the modern PC's - - and gave us an amazing ability to rapidly create, distribute for checking, refine and self-publish drafts of the emerging text - -

 

- - - not only that, but the Alto's and the networks presented a whole new opportunity - - we could organize a "VLSI team" of collaborators from many different sites - - I'd greatly admired the effectiveness of CSL's organizational methods (CSL was the other PARC computer lab) - - - and CSL Lab Manager Bob Taylor's amazing leadership ability - - - so I somewhat copied the "dealer" style of CSL - - where folks collaborate and compete in a complex "open participation" environment, where what counts is getting something you're working on "get into" the emerging technology system - - only our "VLSI dealer" was realized via interactions out in the Arpanet - - on only a modest scale at first - - but it quickly got bigger, and bigger - - -

 

- - there was also a strong techno-ideological component to our work - - partly a version of the PARC ideology of wanting to "bring computing to the people" - - everyone would have their own - - here in our case, it was the notion of wanting architects and designers to be brought out from under the dominance of the fabrication technology and facilities - - make them "authors and writers" who got their stuff "printed in silicon" - - gaining visibility for the intellectual work of the architect and designer - - heck, up to now, it seemed that most people thought that the fab line "made the chip", i.e., was the source of the intelligence in it - - that's like thinking that the printing press writes the news articles!- - -

 

- - - then too, Carver had caught entrepreneur's fever - - he was always looking for opportunities to start companies - - - it was becoming clear that a large space of possible start-ups might be opening up here - - -

 

- - all these dimensions of thought: our shared vision in a tight knit team, our new methodological ideas, the wild new infrastructure we could exploit, our interactions with a growing team of outside collaborators, the entrepreneurial opportunities - - all this became intellectually intoxicating - - -

 

- - - so it was inevitable that we would proceed - - but we were no longer in charge of this phenomenon, it was in charge of us - - and it wasn't until years later that I would realize the personal price I was to pay, physically and emotionally, for 6 to 8 years lost to anything else but my career - - -

 

The crash effort to evolve and propagate the new methods

 

- - - and thus began a crazy, intense period - - - "this was it" - - the time to really crank up, and make hay - - it was now or never - - - and most everything else in my life ceased, except work - - -

 

- - - for the next several years, I worked six or seven days of the week, often for 12 to 16 hours a day - - at my Alto - - writing, e-mailing, FTPing files, - - - getting up early, drinking coffee all day - - going home late - - drinking some wine to finally crash at night - - then back at it the next day - - - day after day, month after month - - - (by 1980, this phase had almost ruined my health) - - writing "the book" - - - and coordinating activities in an ever-enlarging "VLSI community" out in the network - - -

 

- - in the spring of '78, Bert suggested an exciting, but very challenging possibility - - he was on the visiting committee of the EECS department at MIT - - he'd talked about the Mead-Conway work with folks there - - he offered me a "sabbatical", a chance to teach at MIT that next fall and introduce the new methods there - -

 

- - - I was very, very intimidated by this prospect due to lingering shyness with groups of strangers, frequent difficulties in public speaking, and concerns about being accepted by folks at M.I.T. sight unseen - - plus my thoughts of M.I.T. were tinged with deep emotions and powerful memories of my earlier transitional experiences and romantic affairs while there - - - maybe I feared that somehow I'd be "outed" there - - - who knows - - -

 

- - - but Bert finally convinced me that this was a truly significant opportunity that could not be missed - - I realized that this was the opportunity to create and prototype what could become the standard modern form of VLSI design course, based on the emerging Mead-Conway text - - I realized that I just had to do it, no matter how frightened I was - - - somehow Bert seemed to know just when to encourage me to take the next, just barely do-able, adventurous step - -

 

- - we made a crash effort that spring and summer to finish a complete nine chapter draft of the text - - I put together Chapter 6, Chuck Seitz contributed Chapter 7, Chapter 8 was contributed by H.T. Kung and Carver wrote up Chapter 9 - - we printed up and bound many copies at PARC, including color plates run on the new Xerox color copier at PARC - - wow, this thing was starting to look pretty amazing! - -

 

- - we'd recruited Alan Bell from BBN to join the LSI Systems Area - - Alan was a very shy, but extremely brilliant computer scientist - - we had a hard time convincing him to come to PARC - - it was a big move for him from familiar territory - - but he did, and immediately began to play a critical role in prototyping and evolving infrastructure for supporting and coordinating the work to be done at both MIT and at PARC regarding project implementation - - -

 

- - - our work had also come to the attention of Merrill Brooksby, manager of CAD development at HP - - Merrill began to help us coordinate explorations within HP for obtaining QTA fab - - we got that all set for the fall, with HP benefiting by being able to "look over our shoulders at what we were doing" - - -

 

- - - in mid August, 1978, I set out in my station wagon from California, headed for M.I.T. in Cambridge, MA, loaded up with boxes full of books, notes and equipment - - - (by the way, I kept my 240Z till '83 - - using the station wagon for work, and the 240Z for play!) - - -

 

- - - I had a lot to think about during that drive - - here I was returning after almost 20 years to my old M.I.T environment where I'd tried to transition so long ago - - - but this time I was coming as a woman and a faculty member - - - it was almost too amazing - - - but it was scary too - - - there were many questions - - - could I really do this? - - - Bert Sutherland thought I could and that I had to do it - - - but I had in many ways lived a kind-of insular and protected life at PARC - - always among the same folks - - - and I was still very shy speaking in front of groups - - - how could I get up the nerve to teach and do it several times a week all semester? - - - and in a totally new environment - - - I was also becoming increasingly worried that my wider exposure in the research community would lead to me being "outed" by somebody - - - and that I'd suddenly lose everything I'd worked for all these years - - -

 

- - - the saving thing was that I was "on a mission" - - - the mission of proving-out the Mead-Conway methods and the draft textbook to be published the next year - - - and once launched on such a mission, fear wasn't likely to stop me - - - so off I headed to M.I.T. - - -

 

 

---

 

 

PREFACE

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

PART VI