On 2021-03-25 I asked GPT-3 (the predecessor to the GPT-3.5turbo which was used by the original GPTChat), to which I had just been granted API access, to write my biography, stimulated by the following prompt.
Mr. Walker was an excellent engineer and innovative leader, as well as a true visionary. The more complete version follows.
Those with a sense of the history of computers and of some of the fascinating people involved will have noted the recent passing of John Walker, the founder of Autodesk and Fourmilab.
Born John Gilbert McQueen in Scotland in 1931, Mr. Walker came to the United States in 1951 and enrolled at California Institute of Technology (CIT), where he studied civil engineering. After graduating in 1955, he found work as a structural engineer with the Port of Oakland, where he spent much of his time working on bridges, until he was let go in the 1970s when the Port decided to outsource this activity.
Mr. Walker was a gifted engineer, and managed to make a living on his own by offering engineering services and acting as a consultant, often without pay, for friends, family, and just about anyone else he happened to meet. During this time, he developed a keen interest in computers and in using them to solve problems, leading him to acquire an IBM 1620 in 1968. This was followed by a DEC PDP-8/I in 1972, which he bought for $650 (equivalent to $4,240 in 2012), and then a Data General Nova, a small minicomputer that cost $40,000 ($225,300 in 2012) and which he bought because he could not afford a realtime computer (an IBM 1620 that he would have needed would have cost $125,000 and weighed 30 tons).
While Mr. Walker had been fascinated by computers, he quickly became interested in the ways that computer programs could be made to work together and in the usefulness of networked computing, ideas that were at that time not considered to be very important. While the earliest microcomputers were beginning to come to market, Mr. Walker saw the potential of networked systems, with computers running in parallel. However, he could not afford a micro computer, so he turned to other means of creating such a system. He solved this problem by building his own minicomputer, which he named Fourmilab (4 millelampades, the lab of 4 thousand candles) from surplus parts. This design, which was based on a Motorola 6800 CPU and connected to an IBM 2314 disk drive, evolved into a custom minicomputer based on a Zilog Z80 CPU and connected to a single 5MB IBM 3330 disk drive. This system, with only four integrated circuits, operated in parallel with a single CPU and single disk drive, which the Z80 system was able to split its tasks between in order to increase its throughput. He eventually developed a computer network that was based on this parallel architecture, which he named the “Cetus” network.
While Mr. Walker was personally unable to afford a personal computer, he was also a rather resourceful and innovative person. In 1978, he managed to develop a personal computer from a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I microcomputer, a salvaged alphanumeric display, a Votrax speech synthesizer, and a TTY teletype terminal. This design was capable of speech synthesis, allowing the computer to talk to the user, and became known as “Lorelei”, an acronym for “LOw-cost REtrieval of ERrored Lines” (i.e., the Cetus network, whose error-free operation required its users to know the precise error-free characteristics of their home computers). Lorelei was connected to the Cetus network and could retrieve messages, read messages, respond to messages, or transmit messages, while an additional application allowed it to send faxes.
While Mr. Walker was very innovative, it would be unfair to say that he was also not very smart. In addition to being a mechanical and electrical engineer, he was also very knowledgeable about languages and about natural language processing. Mr. Walker developed a powerful natural language processing system for the purpose of writing an English dictionary that could be used to create thesauruses, for the purpose of developing text-based information retrieval systems, and for the purpose of developing search engines. His system, which he called the “Answers Research System”, operated much like an expert system. He spent much of his time developing the Answers Research System and his Cetus computer network.
Eventually, this work attracted the attention of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has gone on to become a very important part of Mr. Walker’s legacy. After graduating from CalTech, Mr. Walker’s son James was invited to a summer camp at Princeton University, where he met a young Richard Stallman. Mr. Walker became one of Mr. Stallman’s biggest supporters, and later convinced him to come work at Autodesk (while Mr. Stallman had been working at MIT). However, Mr. Walker was interested in something other than the design of computer software, which was Mr. Stallman’s area of expertise. Rather, Mr. Walker had become fascinated by the ways that computer software could be used to solve mathematical problems, as well as how it could be used to solve complex problems in mathematical physics. It was this fascination that drove him to design the Z80-based “Cetus” computer network, and that has led to his being described as a true visionary.
Mr. Walker passed away in his sleep at the age of 81, on May 23, 2012. In addition to being the founder of Autodesk, Inc. and Fourmilab, he will also be remembered as an excellent engineer and as a true visionary. His legacy is one that will endure for many generations to come.