View source for Roger Gregory (programmer)

{{Short description|American computer programmer, technologist, and scientist}}
{{for|the judge|Roger Gregory}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Roger Everett Gregory
| image       = 
| alt         = 
| caption     = 
| birth_date  = <!-- {{Birth year and age|YYYY}} -->
| birth_place = 
| death_date  = <!-- {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} (death date then birth date) -->
| death_place = 
| nationality = American
| other_names = 
| known_for   = a key developer of [[Project Xanadu]]
| occupation  = computer programmer
}}
'''Roger Everett Gregory''' is a US computer programmer, technologist, and scientist.  Gregory's work in [[project Xanadu]] made him one of the earliest pioneers of [[hypertext]] technology, which helped lay the foundations for the hyperlink technology that underlies the [[World Wide Web]].<ref name=InternetBiographies/><ref name=WiredXanadu/><ref name=MarketsInformation/><ref name=AphHacking/>  
Gregory attended the [[University of Michigan]] as a mathematics major.  In the 1970s, he founded the Ann Arbor Computer Club, similar to the West Coast's Home Brew Computer Club.

In 1974 Gregory met [[Ted Nelson|Theodore Holm (Ted) Nelson]], the author of [[Computer Lib|Computer Lib/Dream Machines]], and the thinker who coined the term "hypertext".<ref name=WiredXanadu/> 
The pair became friends.  In 1979 Nelson convinced Gregory to move from Michigan and join him in [[Swarthmore, Pennsylvania]], the small, sleepy college town outside of Philadelphia where Nelson earned his undergraduate degree, and first conceived the concept of a hypertext.  Gregory's first summer in Swarthmore, characterized by Xanadu insiders as the ''"Swarthmore Summer"'', was a productive time, where Nelson and Gregory enjoyed the collaboration of other volunteers, including Stuart Greene and [[Mark S. Miller]].

In 1988 Nelson, Gregory, and other members of their team, all moved to [[Sausalito, California]], when [[Autodesk]], a manufacturer of [[Computer aided design]] software, purchased a controlling interest in the Xanadu Project.<ref name=DeniseCaruso1988-04-18/>

Later, as founder, CEO, CTO and Chairman of the Board of Xanadu Operating Company, Gregory led design and development of a hypertext technology that includes quotable documents with version control, fine-grained, bidirectional links, the ability to track intellectual property rights, and a mechanism to pay royalties.<ref name=WiredXanadu/> Gregory is also co-designer of a rotary rocket engine design based on the posthumous patents of [[Robert Goddard]] (U.S. patent 6212876 from 2001).  Today he is a cofounder of [[Eyegorithm]].

In 2010 Gregory was interviewed by the [[Internet Archive]].<ref name=MemoryMachines/>

==References==
{{Reflist|refs=
<ref name=DeniseCaruso1988-04-18>
{{cite news 
| url         = http://www.caruso.com/work/index-sf-examiner/sf-examiner-1988/april-10-1988/
| title       = Three key execs leave Altos Computer
| author      = Denise Caruso
| author-link      = Denise Caruso
| date        = 1988-04-18
| accessdate  = 2015-03-06
| quote       = The Sausalito maker of computer-aided design (CAD) software for the IBM PC, has just bought majority interest in Project Xanadu, Nelson’s hypertext programming co-op project. Rumors as to the identity of the suitor, says Xanadu’s Roger Gregory, ranged from Lucasfilm to Hewlett-Packard to a military think-tank.
}}
</ref>
<ref name=InternetBiographies>
{{cite book
| url         = https://books.google.com/books?id=qi-ItIG6QLwC&dq=%22Roger+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+E.+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+Everett+Gregory%22+hypertext+OR+autodesk+OR+xanadu&pg=PA188
| title       = The Internet: Biographies
| publisher   = [[ABC-CLIO]]
| author      = 
| year = 2005
| page        = 188
| location    = 
| isbn        = 9781851096596
| accessdate  = 2015-03-06
| quote       = Nelson, now teaching at Swarthmore College, gathered together a half-dozen programmers, led by one of Xanadu's most staunch supporters, Roger Gregory to bring the mythic software program to life.  
}}
</ref>
<ref name=MemoryMachines>
{{cite book
| url         = https://books.google.com/books?id=N1qWBQAAQBAJ&dq=%22Roger+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+E.+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+Everett+Gregory%22+hypertext+OR+autodesk+OR+xanadu&pg=PA89
| title       = Memory Machines: The Evolution of Hypertext
| publisher   = Anthem Press
| author      = Belinda Barnet
| date        = 2014
| pages       = 81–82, 89
| location    = 
| isbn        = 9781783083442
| accessdate  = 2015-03-06
| quote       = In an interview with the Internet Archive, Gregory says he got a group together at Swarthmore and designed a system that he 'almost had working' by 1988, when he organized funding through Autodesk, an American software corporation (Gregory 2010).
}}
</ref>
<ref name=AphHacking>
{{cite book
| url         = https://books.google.com/books?id=ui8bQno3YnEC&dq=%22Roger+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+E.+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+Everett+Gregory%22+hypertext+OR+autodesk+OR+xanadu&pg=PA3
| title       = Hacking
| publisher   = [[APH Publishing]]
| author      = Pankaj
| date        = 2005
| page        = 3
| location    = 
| isbn        = 9788176487207
| accessdate  = 2015-03-06
| quote       = Ted Nelson is running around with his Xanadu guys: Roger Gregory, H. Keith Henson (now waging war against the Scientologists) and K. Eric Drexler, later to build the Foresight Institute. 
}}
</ref>
<ref name=WiredXanadu>
{{cite news 
| url         = http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu_pr.html
| title       = The Curse of Xanadu
| publisher   = [[Wired magazine]]
| author      = Gary Wolf 
| accessdate  = 2015-03-06
| quote       = Nelson's book brought him growing acclaim, and in 1979, he decided it was time to gather his disciples. He called upon Roger Gregory to lead the effort. Although Gregory was in Ann Arbor, Nelson insisted that everybody move to Swarthmore so he could exercise his influence at close range.
}}
</ref>
<ref name=MarketsInformation>
{{cite book
| url         = https://books.google.com/books?id=OiqyhuF6YzsC&dq=%22Roger+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+E.+Gregory%22+OR+%22Roger+Everett+Gregory%22+hypertext+OR+autodesk+OR+xanadu&pg=PT153
| title       = Markets, Information and Communication: Austrian Perspectives on the Internet Economy
| publisher   = [[Routledge]]
| editor      = Jack Birner, Pierre Garrouste
| date        = 2013
| page        = 
| location    = 
| isbn        = 9781134393220
| accessdate  = 2015-03-06
| quote       = At one point Roger Gregory, a founder of Xanadu, made a comment which helped us understand why his group is so interested in market process economics.  The reason is that programmers, in their day-to-day experience, cannot help but learn the severe difficulties in getting large, centrally planned systems to work properly.
}}
</ref>
}}

==External links==
* Letter detailing information on project Xanadu: https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_64.html
* [https://archive.org/details/possiplexrogergregoryinterview Roger Gregory Interview at Ted Nelson Book Launch]
* [http://www.udanax.com/ Udanax, the open-source release of the Xanadu code base] for [[Squeak]], a Smalltalk implementation
* Roger's site documenting the [http://www.halfwaytoanywhere.com/ rotary rocket engine]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gregory, Roger}}
[[Category:Year of birth missing (living people)]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:American computer programmers]]
[[Category:University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni]]


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