Robert (Bob) Barton
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Robert (Bob) Barton is recognized as the chief architect of the Burroughs B5000 and other computers such as the B1700. He directed a research lab for Burroughs Corporation in La Jolla, CA. He also taught, from 1968-1973, as a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Utah with David C. Evans, Ivan Sutherland and Thomas Stockham.
Barton was the first recipient of the ACM/IEEE Computer Society Eckert-Mauchly Award in 1979: For his outstanding contributions in basing the design of computing systems on the hierarchical nature of programs and their data.
He was also recognized as a Charter Computer Pioneer by the IEEE Computer Society for his work in Language Directed Architecture. Barton designed machines at a more abstract level, not tied to the technology constraints of the time. He employed high level languages and a stack machine in his design of the B5000. Barton's B5000 design lives on in the modern Unisys ClearPath/MCP systems. His work with stack architectures was the first implementation in a mainframe computer. Hewlett-Packard would later use the stack architecture in its HP calculators with reverse polish notation.
Barton's thinking has been broadly influential. He influenced the thinking of Alan Kay in the development of object-oriented programming, Smalltalk, and the modern GUI systems built into the Macintosh and later Microsoft Windows.
His students at the University of Utah included: Alan Kay, James H. Clark co-founder of Silicon Graphics, John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems, Ed Catmull of Pixar, Alan Ashton co-founder of Word Perfect, Duane Call co-founder of Computer System Architects, Henri Gouraud (Gouraud Shading) and Bui Tuong Phong (Phong shading and the Phong reflection model).
