Artifact Details

Title

Fuller, Sam (Samuel H.) oral history

Catalog Number

102746688

Type

Document

Description

Sam Fuller grew up in humble surroundings in the Detroit, MI area. He developed an interest in mechanical devices and eventually electronics while helping his father in his business. From this work, he developed an interest in engineering. He entered the University of Michigan in 1964. In his sophomore year, he took a course in computer programming which eventually steered him towards computer science which became the focus of his career.

Sam graduated at the top of his class and moved west to Stanford University for graduate work. While there, he earned a Hertz Fellowship to support his work through his PhD in Computer Science. After graduating, he was recruited to come to CMU by Gordon Bell, where Sam worked on multiprocessor computer systems.

From there he was recruited to come to DEC, where he initially worked on the VAX architecture, helping to assure software compatibility among all VAX machines. Eventually he ran all of DECs long-term research groups around the world. As DEC fell apart in the 1990’s, Sam made the move to Analog Devices, Inc. where he became VP of R&D and Chief Technical Officer.

Date

2013-05-13

Contributor

Dennis, Eric, Videographer
Fairbairn, Doug, Interviewer
Fuller, Samuel H., Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

38 p.

Copyright Holder

Computer History Museum

Category

Transcription

Subject

semiconductor history; Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC); Olsen, Ken; Baskett, Forest; Bell, Gordon; VAX computers; VMS (Virtual Memory System); MicroVAX; Titan; Alpha (RISC); Analog Devices; C.mmp (CPU.Multi-Mini-Processor); Cm*; Ethernet; DECnet; Reduced instruction set computer (RISC)

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Lot Number

X6805.2013