Scribd
Upload
74 views1 page

Walker

John Walker (1949-2024) was an American computer programmer, author, and co-founder of Autodesk, a computer-aided design software company. Some of his early projects included writing one of the first computer viruses in 1974 and founding the hardware company Marinchip. In 1982, Walker co-founded Autodesk with 12 others and helped develop their first product, AutoCAD. He resigned from Autodesk in 1994 as the 6th largest PC software company. Later, Walker published personal projects and writings on topics like internet censorship on his website Fourmilab.

Uploaded by

Sami Stauceanu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
74 views1 page

Walker

John Walker (1949-2024) was an American computer programmer, author, and co-founder of Autodesk, a computer-aided design software company. Some of his early projects included writing one of the first computer viruses in 1974 and founding the hardware company Marinchip. In 1982, Walker co-founded Autodesk with 12 others and helped develop their first product, AutoCAD. He resigned from Autodesk in 1994 as the 6th largest PC software company. Later, Walker published personal projects and writings on topics like internet censorship on his website Fourmilab.

Uploaded by

Sami Stauceanu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

John Walker

John Walker (1949 – February 2, 2024)[1] was an American computer programmer, author and co-founder of
the computer-aided design software company Autodesk. He has more recently been recognized for his writing
on his website Fourmilab.

Early projects[edit]
In 1974/1975, Walker wrote the ANIMAL software, which self-replicated on UNIVAC 1100 machines. It is
considered one of the first computer viruses.[2][3][4]

Walker also founded the hardware integration manufacturing company Marinchip.[5] Among other things,
Marinchip pioneered the translation of numerous computer language compilers to Intel platforms.[citation needed]

Autodesk[edit]
In 1982, John Walker and 12 other programmers pooled US$59,000 to start Autodesk (AutoCAD), and began
working on several computer applications.[6] The first completed was AutoCAD,[7] a software application for
computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting.[8] AutoCAD had begun life as Interact,[9][10] a CAD, written by
programmer Michael Riddle[11] in a proprietary language. Walker and Riddle rewrote the program, and
established a profit-sharing agreement for any product derived from InteractCAD. Walker subsequently paid
Riddle US$10 million for all the rights.[citation needed]

The company went public in 1985. By mid-1986, the company had grown to 255 employees with annual sales
of over $40 million.[7] That year, Walker resigned as chairman and president of the company, continuing to work
as a programmer.[12] In 1989, Walker's book, The Autodesk File, was published.[13] It describes his experiences at
Autodesk, based around internal documents (particularly email) of the company.[14]

Walker moved to Switzerland in 1991. By 1994, when he resigned from the company, it was the sixth-largest
personal computer software company in the world, primarily from the sales of AutoCAD. Walker owned 850,000
shares of stock at the time of his departure, worth about $45 million in Autodesk stock at the time ($88,848,226
adjusted for inflation).[12]

Fourmilab[edit]
He published on his personal domain, "Fourmi Lab", designed to be a play on Fermilab and Fourmi, French for
“ant”, one of his early interests.[15] On his Web site, Walker published about his personal projects, including
a hardware random number generator called HotBits, along with software that he wrote and freely distributed,
such as his Earth and Moon viewer.[16][17] Another notable book was called The Hacker's Diet.

The digital imprimatur[edit]


Among other things, he is noted for a frequently cited article entitled The Digital Imprimatur: How big brother
and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle, an article about Internet censorship written in
2003.[18][19] It was published in the magazine Knowledge, Technology & Policy.[20] In the article, Walker argues
that there is increasing pressure limiting the ability for Internet users to voice their ideas, as well as predicting
further Internet censorship. Walker said that the most likely candidate to usher what he calls "the
digital imprimatur" is digital rights management, or DRM.[20]

You might also like