Farewell to two pivotal figures: The founder of Inmos, and the co-creator of MIME
(2022/06/07)
- Reference: 1654587067
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/07/farewell_barron_freed/
- Source link:
Obituary The IT community has suffered a double loss with the passing of two industry icons.
A [1]post in the Facebook group for former Inmos staff says that the company's founder, Professor Iann Marchant Barron, died at the age of 85 last month.
The IEEE [2]called Barron "the one-time enfant terrible of the UK computing industry." In the [3]words of his son, Marchant Barron:
He invented parallel processing, had dinner with the Queen and has been arrested for being a spy.
As The Reg quoted him, when [4]writing about the influence of Inmos and the Transputer:
Iann Barron, now in his mid-seventies, looks back on Inmos as a venture deferred rather than defeated. He likens the Transputer to Babbage's mechanical computing engines, devised in the 19th century, their significance not appreciated for more than 50 years after his death. "People will eventually see what we were talking about, and they'll say, 'yes, well, they did it'."
While still a third-year student at Cambridge, Barron worked at Elliott Brothers, where he designed the Elliott 803 computer, one of which you can [5]see running at the National Museum of Computing and a machine which had a [6]pivotal role in the development of the ALGOL programming language.
He later become an employee, but when the company refused to incorporate some of his ideas, he left and started Computer Technology Limited. Its Modular One computer had a pioneering asynchronous symmetrical point-to-point bus interconnecting its components, and enjoyed particular success in the space industry.
[7]
When one of CTL's major customers collapsed, Barron left and started Inmos, where he [8]invented the Transputer processor. The [9]transputer's inter-processor links built on the design of the Modular One's interconnect, and in turn, the transputer protocol led to IEEE standard [10]1355 , which is the [11]origin [PDF] of the [12]SpaceWire network protocol used by NASA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos.
RIP, standards legend Ned Freed
Edwin Earl Freed, known to his many co-workers as Ned Freed, died [13]at just 63 years old . Freed was the author or co-author of a remarkable 50 different [14]RFC documents , but one of these has touched more people's lives than most of them.
[15]RFC 1341 is the specification for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Although MIME is the standard that allowed for emails to carry attachments, it also does far [16]more . It allows emails to contain more than plain ASCII text, and MIME encoding is how web servers describe the contents of the files they send to web browsers. As such, it is used trillions of times every day.
[17]
Freed started a company called Innosoft to commercialize his work, which was [18]acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2000. He continued his work at Sun, and later at Oracle, although that acquisition [19]led some of his Innosoft colleagues to leave.
[20]Clustered Pi Picos made to run original Transputer code
[21]David May, parallel processing pioneer
[22]Pretty wild that a malicious mailto: link might attach your secret keys and files from your PC to an outgoing message
[23]Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA
Freed suffered from ulcerative colitis for much of his life, which in recent years prevented him from traveling to conferences, but despite this he continued his work as a negotiator and facilitator of internet standards via the IETF.
[24]Nathaniel Borenstein , the co-author of MIME, has written a touching [25]tribute to his colleague, which The Reg cannot hope to better. ®
Get our [26]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/18605718272/posts/10161545333328273/
[2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/571062
[3] https://marchantbarronwords.org/words-in-trees/making/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2011/08/18/heroes_of_tech_david_may/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/15/retro_computing/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/15/algol_60_at_60/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yp8hxsZGfFqTAu-WVg@ZzwAAAJU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[8] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/transputer_king_iann_barron_resurfaces_as_non_executive_chairman_of_direction
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/pi_pico_transputer_code/
[10] https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1355/2039/
[11] https://www.4links.co.uk/application/files/8615/4445/6364/1_The_Origins_of_SpaceWire.pdf
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2005/03/18/dundee_space_center/
[13] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-smtp/pUY2KkiysYu9oe9Ps0Kf6eua1e4/
[14] https://datatracker.ietf.org/person/ned.freed@mrochek.com
[15] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1341
[16] http://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/mime.html
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yp8hxsZGfFqTAu-WVg@ZzwAAAJU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://m2.co.uk/m2/web/story.php/20006D7B7B9BABA3B1658025689C003CB845
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2010/07/14/oracle_lavender_opensolaris/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/pi_pico_transputer_code/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2011/08/18/heroes_of_tech_david_may/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/19/openpgp_smime_email_client_mailto_flaws/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/31/brexitl_obsolete_tech_explained/
[24] http://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/
[25] http://theviewfromguppylake.blogspot.com/2022/05/remembering-ned-freed-1959-2022.html
[26] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
A [1]post in the Facebook group for former Inmos staff says that the company's founder, Professor Iann Marchant Barron, died at the age of 85 last month.
The IEEE [2]called Barron "the one-time enfant terrible of the UK computing industry." In the [3]words of his son, Marchant Barron:
He invented parallel processing, had dinner with the Queen and has been arrested for being a spy.
As The Reg quoted him, when [4]writing about the influence of Inmos and the Transputer:
Iann Barron, now in his mid-seventies, looks back on Inmos as a venture deferred rather than defeated. He likens the Transputer to Babbage's mechanical computing engines, devised in the 19th century, their significance not appreciated for more than 50 years after his death. "People will eventually see what we were talking about, and they'll say, 'yes, well, they did it'."
While still a third-year student at Cambridge, Barron worked at Elliott Brothers, where he designed the Elliott 803 computer, one of which you can [5]see running at the National Museum of Computing and a machine which had a [6]pivotal role in the development of the ALGOL programming language.
He later become an employee, but when the company refused to incorporate some of his ideas, he left and started Computer Technology Limited. Its Modular One computer had a pioneering asynchronous symmetrical point-to-point bus interconnecting its components, and enjoyed particular success in the space industry.
[7]
When one of CTL's major customers collapsed, Barron left and started Inmos, where he [8]invented the Transputer processor. The [9]transputer's inter-processor links built on the design of the Modular One's interconnect, and in turn, the transputer protocol led to IEEE standard [10]1355 , which is the [11]origin [PDF] of the [12]SpaceWire network protocol used by NASA, ESA, JAXA, and Roscosmos.
RIP, standards legend Ned Freed
Edwin Earl Freed, known to his many co-workers as Ned Freed, died [13]at just 63 years old . Freed was the author or co-author of a remarkable 50 different [14]RFC documents , but one of these has touched more people's lives than most of them.
[15]RFC 1341 is the specification for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Although MIME is the standard that allowed for emails to carry attachments, it also does far [16]more . It allows emails to contain more than plain ASCII text, and MIME encoding is how web servers describe the contents of the files they send to web browsers. As such, it is used trillions of times every day.
[17]
Freed started a company called Innosoft to commercialize his work, which was [18]acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2000. He continued his work at Sun, and later at Oracle, although that acquisition [19]led some of his Innosoft colleagues to leave.
[20]Clustered Pi Picos made to run original Transputer code
[21]David May, parallel processing pioneer
[22]Pretty wild that a malicious mailto: link might attach your secret keys and files from your PC to an outgoing message
[23]Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA
Freed suffered from ulcerative colitis for much of his life, which in recent years prevented him from traveling to conferences, but despite this he continued his work as a negotiator and facilitator of internet standards via the IETF.
[24]Nathaniel Borenstein , the co-author of MIME, has written a touching [25]tribute to his colleague, which The Reg cannot hope to better. ®
Get our [26]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/18605718272/posts/10161545333328273/
[2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/571062
[3] https://marchantbarronwords.org/words-in-trees/making/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2011/08/18/heroes_of_tech_david_may/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/15/retro_computing/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/15/algol_60_at_60/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yp8hxsZGfFqTAu-WVg@ZzwAAAJU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[8] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/transputer_king_iann_barron_resurfaces_as_non_executive_chairman_of_direction
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/pi_pico_transputer_code/
[10] https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1355/2039/
[11] https://www.4links.co.uk/application/files/8615/4445/6364/1_The_Origins_of_SpaceWire.pdf
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2005/03/18/dundee_space_center/
[13] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-smtp/pUY2KkiysYu9oe9Ps0Kf6eua1e4/
[14] https://datatracker.ietf.org/person/ned.freed@mrochek.com
[15] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1341
[16] http://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/mime.html
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yp8hxsZGfFqTAu-WVg@ZzwAAAJU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://m2.co.uk/m2/web/story.php/20006D7B7B9BABA3B1658025689C003CB845
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2010/07/14/oracle_lavender_opensolaris/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/pi_pico_transputer_code/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2011/08/18/heroes_of_tech_david_may/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/19/openpgp_smime_email_client_mailto_flaws/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/31/brexitl_obsolete_tech_explained/
[24] http://www.guppylake.com/~nsb/
[25] http://theviewfromguppylake.blogspot.com/2022/05/remembering-ned-freed-1959-2022.html
[26] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I hadn't realised that there was a connection between CTL and the Transputer. I remember being at QUB in the late 70s when the main computer centre was put out of action by a bomb, so those of us learning Fortran as part of the Engineering courses couldn't run programs. Instead we were given accounts on the Engineering Maths department CTL Mod 1 (Modular 1 Teaching System, always known as MITS). Real keyboards, connected to a live system, it's where I (and others) got hooked on programming computers. We knew little about the actual hardware at that point.
RIP Prof. Barron.