Mike Cowlishaw is a visiting professor at the Department of Computer Science at the
University of Warwick
, mottoeng = Mind moves matter
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £7.0 million (2021)
, budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...
, and a Fellow of the
Royal Academy of Engineering. He is a retired
IBM Fellow, and was a Fellow of the
Institute of Engineering and Technology, and the
British Computer Society. He was educated at
Monkton Combe School and the
University of Birmingham
, mottoeng = Through efforts to heights
, established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...
.
Career at IBM
Cowlishaw joined IBM in 1974 as an electronic engineer but is best known as a programmer and writer. He is known for designing and implementing the
Rexx programming language (1984),
his work on colour perception and image processing that led to the formation of
JPEG
JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...
(1985), the
STET folding editor
Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of tex ...
(1977), the
LEXX live parsing editor with
colour highlighting for the
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
(1985), electronic publishing,
SGML applications, the IBM
Jargon File ''IBMJARG'' (1990), a programmable
OS/2 world globe ''PMGlobe'' (1993), ''MemoWiki'' based on his ''GoServe''
Gopher/
http
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
server, and the
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
-related
NetRexx programming language (1997).
He has contributed to various computing standards, including
ISO (
SGML,
COBOL,
C,
C++),
BSI (SGML, C),
ANSI (REXX),
IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements an ...
(
HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
1.0/RFC 1945),
W3C (
XML Schema),
ECMA (
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
/
ECMAScript
ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262
ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripti ...
,
C#,
CLI CLI may refer to:
Computing
* Call Level Interface, an SQL database management API
* Command-line interface, of a computer program
* Command-line interpreter or command language interpreter; see List of command-line interpreters
* CLI (x86 instr ...
), and
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...
(
754 decimal floating-point). He retired from IBM in March 2010.
Decimal arithmetic
Cowlishaw has worked on aspects of
decimal
The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...
arithmetic; his proposal for an improved Java BigDecimal class (
JSR 13) is now included in Java 5.0, and in 2002, he invented a refinement of
Chen–Ho encoding
Chen–Ho encoding is a memory-efficient alternate system of binary encoding for decimal digits.
The traditional system of binary encoding for decimal digits, known as binary-coded decimal (BCD), uses four bits to encode each digit, resulting in ...
known as
densely packed decimal encoding. Cowlishaw's decimal arithmetic specification formed the proposal for the decimal parts of the
IEEE 754 standard, as well as being followed by many implementations, such as
Python and
SAP NetWeaver. His decNumber decimal package is also available as open source under several licenses and is now part of
GCC, and his proposals for decimal hardware have been adopted by IBM and others. They are integrated into the
IBM POWER6 and
IBM System z10 processor cores, and in numerous IBM software products such as
DB2,
TPF (in
Sabre
A sabre (French: �sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as t ...
),
WebSphere MQ
IBM MQ is a family of message-oriented middleware products that IBM launched in December 1993. It was originally called MQSeries, and was renamed ''WebSphere MQ'' in 2002 to join the suite of WebSphere products. In April 2014, it was renamed ''IB ...
, operating systems, and C and PL/I compilers.
Other activities
Cowlishaw wrote an emulator for the
Acorn System 1
The Acorn System 1, initially called the Acorn Microcomputer (Micro-Computer), was an early 8-bit microcomputer for hobbyists, based on the MOS 6502 CPU, and produced by British company Acorn Computers from 1979.
The main parts of the system we ...
, and collected related documentation. Outside computing, he caved in the UK, New England, Spain, and Mexico
and continues to cave and hike in Spain. He is a life member of the
National Speleological Society
The National Speleological Society (NSS) is an organization formed in 1941 to advance the exploration, conservation, study, and understanding of caves in the United States. Originally headquartered in Washington D.C., its current offices are in ...
(NSS), wrote articles in the 1970s and 1980s on battery technology and on the shock strength of caving ropes, and designed
LED-based
caving lamps.
His current programming projects include MapGazer. and PanGazer
Publications (primary author)
* ''The NetRexx Language'', Cowlishaw, Michael F., , Prentice-Hall, 1997
* ''The REXX Language'', Cowlishaw, Michael F., in English: , (second edition) 1990; in German: , Carl Hanser Verlag, 1988; in Japanese: , Kindai-kagaku-sha, 1988
* ,
Cowlishaw, Michael F., ''Proceedings
16th IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic''
ARITH 16, , pp. 104–111, IEEE Comp. Society, June 2003
Densely Packed Decimal Encoding Cowlishaw, Michael F.,
''IEE Proceedings – Computers and Digital Techniques'' ISSN 1350-2387, Vol. 149, No. 3, pp. 102–104, IEE, May 2002
A Decimal Floating-Point Specification Cowlishaw, Schwarz, Smith, and Webb, ''Proceedings 15th IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic'' (Arith15), , pp. 147–154, IEEE Comp. Society, June 2001
* , Cowlishaw, Michael F., ''Proceedings of IEEE CompCon 97'', , pp. 200–205, IEEE Press, Los Alamitos, Spring 1997
The Early History of REXX Cowlishaw, Michael F., ''IEEE Annals of the History of Computing'', ISSN 1058-6180, Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1994, pp. 15–24
A large-scale computer conferencing system Chess and Cowlishaw, ''IBM Systems Journal'', Vol. 26, No. 1, 1987, IBM Reprint order number G321-5291
LEXX – A programmable structured editor Cowlishaw, Michael F., ''IBM Journal of Research and Development'', Vol. 31, No. 1, 1987, IBM Reprint order number G322-0151
Fundamental requirements for picture presentation Cowlishaw, Michael F., ''Proceedings Society for Information Display'', Volume 26, No. 2 (1985)
The design of the REXX language Cowlishaw, Michael F., ''IBM Systems Journal'', Volume 23, No. 4, 1984, IBM Reprint order number G321-5228
The Characteristics and Use of Lead-Acid Cap Lamps Cowlishaw, Michael F.
Speleogroup, ''Transactions British Cave Research Association'', Volume 1, No. 4, pp. 199–214, December 1974
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cowlishaw, Mike
Living people
British computer scientists
Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
IBM Fellows
Programming language designers
Free software programmers
Rexx
British cavers
Fellows of the British Computer Society
Fellows of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
Academics of the University of Warwick
Alumni of the University of Birmingham
People educated at Monkton Combe School
Year of birth missing (living people)