Of possible interest to UCSD Pascal fans... -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: UCSD Pascal Reunion Symposium 10/22 Dozens of alumni will gather at UCSD on Friday, Oct. 22, to mark the 30th anniversary of the computer language UCSD Pascal, one of the first languages of the personal-computer era. The UCSD Pascal Reunion Symposium will take place from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Price Center Ballroom, and will be open to the public, free of charge. (To register, go to http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/Pascal/registration.sfe.) The UCSD Pascal symposium is organized by UCSD?s Jacobs School of Engineering and its Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department, and is co-sponsored by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. The event will feature talks by several former researchers on the project, including UCSD Pascal?s founding father, professor emeritus Kenneth Bowles, who will speculate on "Pascal: What If?". Other speakers include Richard Kaufmann, class of ?78, now a distinguished technologist at Hewlett-Packard, who will reminisce on "What the Heck Was UCSD Pascal?;" Roger Sumner, ?77, president of Beach Software Designs, who will discuss Pascal?s far-reaching impact; and CSE professor Henrik Wann Jensen, on ?Digital Illumination.? Following those presentations, CSE professor Stefan Savage will moderate a roundtable discussion among Kaufmann, Sumner and four other members of Bowles? early research team: Mark Overgaard, '78, President, Pigeon Point Systems; John Van Zandt, '76 '79 '86, President, CEO Consultancy, Inc.; Keith Shillington, '78, Co-Owner, E Street Caf?, Encinitas, California; and Lucia Yandell, '78 '80, JSF SW Process Lead, Northrop Grumman, ST Radio Systems. UCSD Pascal became both a programming language and an operating system for some of the earliest personal computers. Its development not only put computer science at UCSD on the map in a big way, but its innovations also had a major impact on developers of other languages and operating systems at Apple, Microsoft, and elsewhere. Pascal was originally created by Swiss scientist Niklaus Wirth in 1969 for use on mainframe computers. But starting in 1974, Bowles ? who at the time directed UCSD?s computing center ? began to adapt Pascal for use on so-called "microcomputers," precursors of today?s PCs. At one point or another, more than 70 students were involved in the UCSD Pascal project, and by 1983, UCSD Pascal had become an ISO standard language. The University of California then sold the technology to SofTech Systems, which tried but failed to convince IBM to adopt UCSD Pascal as the core operating system of its first personal computers. (Microsoft's MS-DOS won the IBM contract.) For a history of the UCSD Pascal program, including recollections from many of the speakers who will attend the symposium, read ?UCSD Pascal and the PC Revolution,? by Christine Foster, in the September 2004 issue of @UCSD. It is available online at http://www.alumni.ucsd.edu/magazine/vol1no3/features/pascal.htm . For the complete program, go to http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/Pascal/ . We hope to see you there! ------- End of forwarded message -------