The Jeff Rulifson papers contain materials that document Rulifson’s career as a computer scientist working on projects such as artificial intelligence, NLS (oN-Line Systems), and office information systems at Stanford Research Institute’s Augmentation Research Center, Xerox PARC, ROLM Corporation, Syntelligence, Inc., and Sun Microsystems. The records span 1956 through 1997, with the bulk of the collection being from 1961 to 1985. Materials include technical papers and reports, videotape, correspondence, articles, memos, presentations, computer and programming manuals, and administrative papers.
These folders include two copies of a paper titled "Internetwork Experiments with the Bay Area Packet Radio Network," source code regarding TENEX, papers on interactive graphical programming, and correspondence, design drawings, and articles about graphic design and user interface for the STAR Desktop and the 8010 Star Information System.
These folders include performance reviews for the Messaging Products Division (MPD) of ROLM, management guides written by Rulifson, a ROLM philosophy pamphlet, a systems development methodology on ROLM Information Systems, certificates and materials from ROLM courses that Rulifson attended, blank performance evaluation forms for employees, ROLM job descriptions, and correspondence between Rulifson and colleagues labeled "humor."
This box contains 14 Sony videotape reels in original plastic cases. Most are either unlabeled, the label has been crossed out, or the label is illegible. One is labeled "Videotape of lecture by DCE [Douglas Engelbart] to Stanford EE [Electrical Engineering] Seminar, probably in Spring of 1970, for Prof. Robert Kincheloe."
These folders include results of studies regarding office procedures in use at a Xerox Branch Office in order to inform developments of Office Information Systems (OIS). Also included are documents grouped under "Widget Memos" surrounding a series of office exercises, in which Xerox PARC researchers led employees in simulating a simple office task in greatly accelerated time. The participants of this study created documents under a fictitious company called International Widgets Inc.
OfficeTalk was a project to design a language for expressing typical office procedures so that these procedures could be performed with the aid of a computer system. It was designed so that office workers could write simple computer programs to help with activities like file organization, sending and receiving documents, tracing lost forms, etc. Related projects covered in these folders are referred to as OZ-1 and OZ-2.
These folders contain notes and reports about the development of the QA4 programming language and artificial intelligence. Many of the reports are authored by Rulifson in conjunction with his fellow researchers.
