Martin A. Allen (1931–2009) was the

chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

, co-founder, president, and largest individual

stockholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the l ...

(2,272,866 shares) of

Computervision Computervision, Inc. (CV) was an early pioneer in Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing ( CAD/CAM). Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. Its earl ...

Corp. Its first product, CADDS-1, was aimed at the printed circuit layout, and 2-D drafting markets.

Career

Computervision Corp.

Martin (Marty) A. Allen co-founded Computervision Corp. in 1969 with

Philippe Villers Philippe Villers founded the company Computervision with Marty Allen in 1969. In 1980 he co-founded Automatix, an early robotics company, which he led until 1986. He later served as president of Cognition Corporation for 3 years. He is current ...

Boston, MA Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. In 1980 he led an effort to create the first Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), build to handle 2-D and 3-D modeling.

Retirement

Allen netted $34 million when, at age 57, he sold Computervision Corp. to

Prime Computer Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of Personal computer, PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, ...

Inc. on 29 January 1988.

Early life and education

Born in

Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Iowa, most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is the county seat of Polk County, Iowa, Polk County with parts extending into Warren County, Iowa, Wa ...

, Allen was raised in California. He attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and obtained a degree in engineering.

References

1931 births 2009 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople American computer businesspeople {{US-compu-bio-stub