Some publications of Les Earnest

<les at cs.stanford.edu>

 


Les Earnest with 3D drawing of 6D hyper-cube

 

Biography

Biography of Les Earnest, October 2005.  An orderly summary of a random walk.

 

My life as a cog, Part 1, Matrix News, January 2000.  Reviews encounters with advanced technology from age 2 to 22 and acquisition of an FBI record by age 12.

 

My analog to digital conversion, August 2009. In the 1950s I helped design the SAGE air defense system, which was a technological marvel that included the first computer network. Unfortunately it didn’t actually work but gave rise to a military-industrial-political complex that has bilked U.S. taxpayers out of many billions of dollars and is still going strong. Along the way I managed to get permission to use nuclear warheads based on an analysis that was somewhat defective.

 

Computer History

SAIL Reunion November 22, 2009 Announces a reunion of participants in projects of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) in the 1966-80 time period together with participants in the modern SAIL.

  Invitees – If you know how to reach any with a “?” in the right column, please tell Les

  Reunion dinner participants

  Participants in the November 21 Walkabout

  Notes from some who can’t come

  Medalists

 

Blogs turn 10--Who is the father? by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, CNET News, Mar. 21, 2007. Discusses the origins of blogs, including the proto-blog service included in the first social networking program, FINGER, which was created by Les Earnest in the early 1970s.

 

Internet creation myths, July 2004, is an article under construction that deconstructs some myths about who invented the Internet.

 

SAIL Away, The Analytical Engine, May 1995. Reviews spin-offs of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL) that helped populate Silicon Valley.

 

DIALNET and home computers, (with John McCarthy) Proc. First West Coast Computer Faire, San Francisco, April 1977.  Describes a system that provides ARPANET-like services to multiple users via switched telephone circuits, including email, file transfer and remote login.

 

The first ten years of artificial intelligence research at Stanford, (with John McCarthy, Edward Feigenbaum & Joshua Lederberg), Stanford University Report No. STAN-CS-74-409, July 1973. Summarizes research in computer vision and robotics (hand-eye systems and a robot vehicle), speech recognition, heuristic programming, representation theory, mathematical theory of computation, and modeling of organic chemical processes, all performed under a contract with the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Ancillary projects included the development of a multi-processor timesharing system with display terminals on all desks, advanced programming languages (LISP and SAIL), the first interactive computer aided design system (SUDS) as well as research in higher mental functions, computer generated music and Mars picture processing.

 

Cycling

Cyclops USA, 1979-present. An irregular journal of bicycle racing and governance.

 

Bylaws and Racing Rules of the Federation of Independent Associations for Cycling (FIAC), 2002-present.  As founding Treasurer, then Director and now Executive Director, drafted both the bylaws and racing rules of the upstart FIAC.

 

Bylaws of USA Cycling, 1994-1999.  Prior to becoming a founding Director and Secretary of USA Cycling, I drafted the original bylaws, which were then surreptitiously amended before presentation to the approving body.  As a result, commercial cycling interests gained control of this “charitable nonprofit corporation” and have run it to suit their financial interests ever since.

Bylaws of the National Off-Road Bicycle Association (NORBA), 1989-1999.  Drafted the NORBA bylaws after this organization was purchased by USCF in 1989 and drafted new ones prior to the formation of USA Cycling in 1994.

 

Bylaws and Racing Rules of the United States Cycling Federation (USCF), 1978-1999.  As Director, sometimes Technical Chair and often Legislation Chair, reorganized and rewrote nearly all bylaws and racing rules over a 21 year period.  A major revision of racing rules in 1980 was done in collaboration with UCI International Commissaire Artie Greenberg.

 

Helmets

Modification to: Standard Specification for Helmets used in Recreational Bicycling or Roller Skating, ASTM Standard F1447. adopted 2002. Revises the existing bicycle helmet standard to restrict its used to recreational cycling and expand its use to cover recreational roller skating.

 

Modification to: Standard Specifications for Helmets used in Skateboarding and Trick Roller Skating, ASTM Standard F1492, adopted 1997.  Revises the existing skateboarding helmet standard to make it applicable also to trick roller skating.

 

Standard Specification for Helmets used in Recreational Roller Skating, ASTM Standard F1751, adopted 1996. Provided the first helmet standard for roller skaters.  Superseded in 2002 by revised ASTM Standard F1447, above.

 

Human-Computer Interface

Making WYSIWYG characters shape up, Proc Protext IV Conf., Boston, 1987.  Describes a mathematical method for choosing pixel widths of characters so that lines of text most closely match their ideal widths.

 

A look back at an office of the future, Decision Support Systems: Issues and Challenges, Pergamon Press, Oxford, England, 1981.  Describes SAIL computer services for document preparation and other interactive services, including displays on every desk with full bitmap graphics dating from 1971.

 

Machine recognition of cursive writing, IFIP Congress 1962 (Munich), Information Processing 62, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1963.  Describes the first successful handwriting recognizer, which includes the first spelling checker.  Nilo Lindgren wrote an article about this work, Machine Recognition of Human Language, Part III – Cursive Script Recognition, IEEE Spectrum, May 1965.

 

Military Command and Control Systems

E2A is worse than Y2K CACM July 2000.  A wry look at Y2K doomsters, avaricious contractors and military acronymiacs.

 

Racial Classification

Can computers cope with human races? CACM, Feb. 1989.  Reviews government ethnic and racial classification schemes, which are scientific nonsense, and points out that a scientifically rigorous classification scheme could be created based on DNA testing, though that appears to be pointless.

 

Radio Markers

Radio markers needed, Feb. 1965. I wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior advocating that roadside signs indicating points of interest and providing historical information be replaced by low powered radio systems providing this information so that motorists could get this information without pulling off the highway or trying to read the sign while driving by. I received a prompt favorable reply from a representative of the National Park Service (attached), but then nothing further happened, as usual. I believe that this proposal still makes sense and modern digital technology would substantially lower the cost of doing it. But will government authorities ever figure that out?

 

Robotics

Stanford Cart, August 2005. The Stanford Cart was born as a research platform for studying the problem of controlling a Moon rover from Earth. It then was reconfigured as a robot vehicle for research in visual navigation, then went into show business for a few years. It now resides in a home for retired robots while awaiting a comeback.

 

A computer with hands, eyes and ears, (with John McCarthy, D. Raj Reddy and P. Vicens), AFIPS Vol. 33, (Proc. 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference), Thompson, Washington D.C. 1968.  Describes Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab research facilities and accomplishments in speech recognition, computer vision and robotics.

 

Choosing an eye for a computer, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. Memo AIM-51, April 1967.  Develops performance models for alternative visual sensors and shows, among other things, that image dissector cameras (one of which had been purchased at great expense by Stanford on advice of an MIT professor) have much lower performance than inexpensive Vidicon cameras.

 

Software Distribution

Modular Software Security, U.S. Patent # 4,888,798, Dec. 19, 1989 (assigned to Minolta-QMS).  Patents a scheme for freely distributing encrypted software for computers with hardware identity codes, then selling numeric keys to unlock selected parts.

 

Town of Los Altos Hills, California

Articles about the Town Los Altos Hills, the legal underpinnings of its pathway system and some public safety issues, most of which the City Council has consistently ignored.

 

Vehicle Dynamics

Kutta integration with error control, presented at ACM National Conference, 1956, proposes a way to numerically solve simultaneous differential equations, such as those used in flight simulation, by automatically adjusting time steps based on error estimates obtained from a modified Runge Kutta method.