- Bill Atkinson
Bill Atkinson (born 1951) is an American
computer engineer andphotographer . Atkinson worked atApple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from theUniversity of California, San Diego , whereApple Macintosh developerJef Raskin was one of his professors. Atkinson continued his studies as a graduate student at theUniversity of Washington .Atkinson was part of the
Apple Macintosh development team and was the creator of the ground-breakingMacPaint application, among others. He also designed and implementedQuickDraw , the fundamental toolbox that the Macintosh used for graphics. QuickDraw's performance was essential for the success of the Macintosh'sgraphical user interface . Atkinson also designed and implementedHyperCard , the first popularhypermedia system.Around 1990,
General Magic 's founding, with Bill Atkinson as one of the three co-founders, met the following press:The obstacles to General Magic's success may appear daunting, but General Magic is not your typical start-up company. Its partners include some of the biggest players in the worlds of computing, communications, and consumer electronics, and it's loaded with top-notch engineers who have been given a clean slate to reinvent traditional approaches to ubiquitous worldwide communications. ( [http://www.byte.com/art/9402/sec3/art1.htm -Byte Magazine] )
As of 1996, he was involved full-time in fine-art digital
nature photography . Bill Atkinson, an early adopter of digital photography, has pioneered techniques and workflow used today in fine-art digital printing of photographs.In 2007 Atkinson began working as an outside developer with
Numenta , a startup working on computer intelligence. On his work there Atkinson said, "what Numenta is doing is more fundamentally important to society than the personal computer and the rise of the Internet." [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/02/01/8398989/index.htm]Some of Atkinson's noteworthy contributions to the field of computing include:
* MacintoshQuickDraw and LisaLisaGraf
*Marching ants
*Menu bar
* TheSelection lasso
*FatBits
*MacPaint
*HyperCard External links
* [http://www.billatkinson.com/Homepage.pl Bill Atkinson Photography]
* [http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutTheArtist.html About Bill Atkinson]
* [http://folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&characters=Bill%20Atkinson&detail=medium Folklore.org anecdotes about Bill Atkinson]References
# cite web
title =Jeff Hawkins and the Brain
work =Business 2.0
publisher =CNN
date =2007-03-06
url =http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/02/01/8398989/index.htm
accessdate =2007-07-03Persondata
NAME= Atkinson, Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Nature Photographer, Former Software Designer and member of the original Macintosh Team
DATE OF BIRTH=
PLACE OF BIRTH=
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.