Truth Engineering
By: Larry Walker, May 2023; Context: Sperry Knowledge Systems Center. Because of its success in the global airline reservation systems market, in the early 1970s Univac established the International Research & Development Center in London. At that time Univac had ⅓ of the global airline reservation market while IBM had the remaining ⅔. In the US, Univac…
By: Larry Walker, May 2023; Context: Sperry Knowledge Systems Center. Larry reported to Sperry Univac’s Development Center located in Roseville, Minnesota in the Fall of 1966. Larry knew nothing about Univac systems, nor did he know any individuals who worked in the Roseville Center. His assignment was to become familiar with Univac’s Exec 8 Operating System. Exec…
By: Larry Walker, May 2023; Context: Sperry Knowledge Systems Center. The Beginning Married while Larry was still in college, Judy and Larry began thinking about ‘what is next’. While Judy was working to cover their living costs while in college and Larry made a little money on ‘odd jobs’ around campus, they were nearing the end of…
By: Larry Walker, September 2023; Context: Sperry Knowledge Systems Center. BA Lehigh University, 1963. Larry Walker spent 40+ years in the Computer Industry, a laboratory for continuous change and increased productivity. Larry led world-class people in pursuit of technical excellence, industry breakthroughs, and new markets. Larry started as a systems programmer with Control Data and…
By: Larry Walker, May 2023; Context: Sperry Knowledge Systems Center. The first meeting was convened in 1985 by Gerry Probst, Chairman of Sperry. He opened the meeting with these remarks: “Gentlemen, Univac missed the mini-computer. Then we missed the personal computer. I have been hearing a great deal about this new artificial intelligence technology. I…
By: Larry Walker, May 2023; Context: Sperry Knowledge Systems Center. This blog supports an effort to describe operational facilities which were successfully applied to development of Knowledge Based Systems (KBS) at Sperry Univac from 1985 to 1987. The organization associated with this effort was the Knowledge Systems Center (KSC), with Larry L. Walker as the Program Manager….