Joseph Thomas West III (November 22, 1939 – May 19, 2011) was a technologist and the protagonist of the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

winning

non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with b ...

book '' The Soul of a New Machine''. West began his career in computer design at

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

, after seven years at the

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a research institute of the Smithsonian Institution, concentrating on astrophysical studies including galactic and extragalactic astronomy, cosmology, solar, earth and planetary sciences, the ...

, a job he'd gotten right out of college. He started working for

Data General Data General Corporation was one of the first minicomputer firms of the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicompute ...

in 1974. He became the head of Data General's

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group and then became the lead on the Eagle project, building a machine officially named the

Eclipse MV/8000 The Eclipse MV/8000 was the first in a family of 32-bit minicomputers produced by Data General during the 1980s. Codenamed ''Eagle'' during development, its architecture was a new 32-bit design backward compatible with the previous 16-bit Eclipse ...

. After the publication of ''Soul of a New Machine'', West was sent to Japan by Data General where he helped design DG-1, the first full-screen laptop. His last project in 1996, a thin Web server, was intended to be an internet-ready machine. West retired as Chief Technologist in 1998.

Personal life

West was married to Elizabeth West in 1965; they divorced in 1994. The couple had two daughters, Katherine West and librarian Jessamyn West. West married Cindy Woodward (his former assistant at Data General) in 2001; the couple divorced in 2011. West died at the age of 71 in his

Westport, Massachusetts Westport (Massachusett: ) is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 16,339 at the 2020 census. The village of North Westport lies in the town. Other named areas of the town are "Westport Point," which has a ...

home of an apparent heart attack. His nephew, Christopher Schwarz, is a former editor of '' Popular Woodworking'' magazine, author of ''The Anarchist's Toolchest'', and co-founder of Lost Art Press; West's death prompted Schwarz to "leave the magazine and do my own thing".

Personal life

References

Further reading