Without the work of Robert W. Taylor, this article would likely not exist in its current form.

Taylor was a project manager at NASA, and in 1961, he sent Douglas Engelbart to Stanford Research Institute, where he got involved in the creation of the modern computer mouse. In 1966, under Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), he led the creation of ARPANET, the first, a very early form of the internet, where the ARPA computers were hooked into one network throughout the United States.

Later, he was also involved in creating a personal computer, Alto, at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. This computer had a graphical user interface, which was instrumental in both Microsoft’s and Apple’s success later. He and his engineering team also helped developing Ethernet, as well as a word processing program, which was evolved into Microsoft Word.

Robert W. Taylor, who passed away on April 13 at the age of 85, was one of the pioneers of the modern technology, and as such, he deserves to be mentioned. May he rest in peace.