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- Les Earnest - Curriculum Vitae
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- After Les Earnest graduated from Caltech in 1953, he
somehow became the only Digital Computer Project Officer in the U.S. Navy.
His responsibility was to make an IBM CPC (Card Programmed Caclulator)--an
electromechanical digital computer with just 40 words of storage--produce
missile and aircraft flight simulation check solutions for "Typhoon,"
the world's largest and fastest computer (analog).
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- In 1956 he became a civilian again and went to MIT Lincoln
Lab to help design the SAGE air defense system, which was to become the
new largest computer in the world. He designed the guidance programs for
several manned interceptors and missiles, designed the Intercept Director's
display console and headed the task group that obtained nuclear warhead
certification for the BOMARC missle.
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- He continued this work when MITRE Corporation split off
from MIT and also picked up an MS from MIT. As a spare-time project,
he developed the first pen-based computer system that reliably recognized
cursive writing at the word level (1961). He subsequently helped develop
several military intelligence systems, was loaned to the CIA for a year,
then worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on their so-called command-control-communications
system.
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- Having become disenchanted with military development
projects, in 1965 he came to Stanford University to work with John McCarthy
as Executive Officer of the Artificial Intelligence Lab. He initiated some
work in robotics there and accidentally invented the first spelling checker.
He was a member of the technical committee that initiated the development
of ARPAnet, which later became Internet, and also created the Internet
FINGER protocol.
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- In 1980 he became the founding president of Imagen Corp.,
which developed and manufactured the first desktop publishing systems using
laser printers. In 1985 he returned to Stanford and became associate chair
of the Computer Science Department. In 1988 he retired to a life of occasional
consulting and excessive volunteerism.
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- He has served on a number of corporate boards of directors
and has been involved in bicycle racing for many years as both a competitor
and official. He wrote most of the racing rules used in the U.S. for road
and track racing. He was also editor and publisher of "California
Yumyum" for a number of years, which published reviews of Northern
California restaurants by email correspondents.
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