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Interviews and Oral Histories

Abstract

A curated gateway to primary voices: external interviews and oral-history recordings in which the people covered by this encyclopedia tell their own stories. Every entry links the person’s article in this vault and at least one interview held by an archive or broadcaster, with an archived copy where one exists.

What belongs here

Only material in which the person speaks for themselves: oral-history sessions, video or audio interviews, and self-narrated retrospectives. Third-party documentaries qualify only for their interview segments. Every person listed has an article in this encyclopedia. Links name the holding institution and the interview so an entry stays findable even if both links die.

Major Collections

These archives hold most of the material below and are the first places to look for anyone not yet listed.

Interviews A–Z

A

Frances Allen · Frances Allen and Compiler Optimization

  • Oral history, IEEE History Center, 2001, interviewed by Janet Abbate. Transcript. IBM career from FORTRAN teaching to Stretch-Harvest and PTRAN. ETHW (archived)
  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, 2008, interviewed by Al Kossow. CHM catalog (archived)

Gene Amdahl · Gene Amdahl and the System/360

  • Oral history, Charles Babbage Institute, 1986 and 1989, interviewed by Arthur L. Norberg. Transcript, 147 pages. The WISC machine, the IBM 704 and System/360 architecture, founding Amdahl Corporation and Trilogy. University Digital Conservancy
  • Biography and materials, IEEE History Center. ETHW

Marc Andreessen · Marc Andreessen and Netscape

  • Video history, Smithsonian Institution, interviewed by David K. Allison (Computerworld Smithsonian Awards). Transcript. NCSA Mosaic, founding Netscape with Jim Clark, the browser wars. NMAH

Bill Atkinson · Bill Atkinson and HyperCard

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, June 8, 2004, interviewed by Grady Booch, with Andy Hertzfeld. Transcript. QuickDraw, the Lisa and Macintosh user interface, MacPaint, the road to HyperCard. CHM catalog

B

John Backus · John Backus and FORTRAN

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, September 5, 2006, interviewed by Grady Booch. Video and transcript. FORTRAN team, BNF, function-level programming. CHM catalog (archived); ACM hosts the transcript (archived)

Ralph Baer · Ralph Baer and the Magnavox Odyssey

  • Oral history, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Archives Center. The “Brown Box” prototype and the Magnavox Odyssey, the birth of home video gaming. Ralph H. Baer Papers oral history
  • Interviews in the Smithsonian Video Game Pioneers Oral History Collection. SOVA, NMAH.AC.1498

Paul Baran · Paul Baran and Packet Switching

  • Oral history, IEEE History Center. Transcript. RAND, survivable communications, the eleven-volume “On Distributed Communications.” ETHW
  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, January 12, 1988, interviewed by James L. Pelkey. Transcript. Packet switching and its slow path to ARPANET. CHM catalog

Andy Bechtolsheim · Andy Bechtolsheim and Sun

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, interviewed by Douglas Fairbairn. Transcript. The Stanford University Network workstation, CAD tools, founding Sun Microsystems, the early check to Google. CHM catalog

Tim Berners-Lee · Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web

  • Oral history, IEEE History Center, April 9, 2004, interviewed by Robert Colburn. Transcript. CERN, the 1989 proposal, the first browser and server, founding the W3C. ETHW
  • Interview, British Computer Society. Transcript. BCS

Manuel Blum · Manuel Blum: From Complexity to CAPTCHA

  • Turing Award interview, ACM, October 26, 2017, interviewed by Ann Gibbons in Pittsburgh. Video and transcript, over three hours. Complexity theory, program checking, cryptography, the CAPTCHA. ACM interview

Karlheinz Brandenburg · Karlheinz Brandenburg and MP3

  • Interview, Internet History Podcast, 2015, for MP3’s 20th birthday. Audio, English. Erlangen origins, the listening tests, licensing. Internet History Podcast (archived)
  • Interview, Deutscher Zukunftspreis Wissenschaftspodcast. Audio, German. The MP3 story told for a general audience. Deutscher Zukunftspreis (archived)

Dan Bricklin · Dan Bricklin and VisiCalc

  • Oral history, Charles Babbage Institute, May 7, 2004, interviewed by Martin Campbell-Kelly and Paul Ceruzzi, with Bob Frankston. Transcript. MIT Multics, the idea for VisiCalc at Harvard Business School, the first spreadsheet. University Digital Conservancy
  • “The Creation and Destruction of VisiCalc,” personal account, Computer History Museum. CHM catalog

Fred Brooks · Fred Brooks and the Mythical Man-Month

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, September 2007, interviewed by Grady Booch in Cambridge, UK. Transcript. Managing the IBM System/360, the OS/360 overrun behind The Mythical Man-Month, founding UNC computer science. CHM catalog

Nolan Bushnell · Nolan Bushnell and Atari

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, 2024, interviewed by Hansen Hsu. Video and transcript. Computer Space, founding Atari with Ted Dabney, Pong, the Magnavox lawsuit, Chuck E. Cheese. CHM catalog
  • Oral history, Smithsonian Video Game Pioneers Collection. Transcript. NMAH transcript PDF

C

Vint Cerf · Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, November 7, 2007, interviewed by Donald Nielson. Transcript, 41 pages. ARPANET, TCP/IP design, DARPA years. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Oral history, IEEE History Center. Transcript. ETHW (archived)

Lynn Conway · Lynn Conway and VLSI

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum (2014 Fellow), interviewed by Dag Spicer. Video. The IBM ACS project and her firing, the Mead-Conway VLSI design method, the MPC79 chip-fabrication run. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Biography and materials, IEEE History Center. ETHW (archived)

Fernando Corbató · Fernando Corbató and Time-Sharing

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, February 1, 2006, interviewed by Steven Webber. Transcript. Whirlwind, the Compatible Time-Sharing System, Project MAC, Multics. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Oral history, Charles Babbage Institute, November 14, 1990, interviewed by Arthur L. Norberg. Transcript. University Digital Conservancy

Seymour Cray · Seymour Cray and Supercomputing

  • Video interview, Smithsonian Institution, May 9, 1995, interviewed by David K. Allison. Transcript. Control Data, the CDC 6600, founding Cray Research, his one-person design philosophy. NMAH

Ward Cunningham · Ward Cunningham and the Wiki

  • “An Evening with Wiki Inventor Ward Cunningham,” Computer History Museum, April 24, 2006, in conversation with John Gage. Video. The origin of WikiWikiWeb, design patterns, Extreme Programming. CHM catalog

Dave Cutler · Dave Cutler and Windows NT

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, February 25, 2016, interviewed by Grant Saviers. Video and transcript. RSX-11 and VMS at DEC, the cancelled Prism project, building Windows NT at Microsoft. CHM catalog

D

Whitfield Diffie · Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman

  • Interview, Computer History Museum, March 28, 2011, interviewed by John Plutte. Public-key cryptography and the 1976 “New Directions in Cryptography” paper with Martin Hellman. CHM catalog

Edsger Dijkstra · Edsger Dijkstra and Structured Programming

  • Oral history OH 330, Charles Babbage Institute, August 2, 2001, interviewed by Philip L. Frana in Austin, Texas. Transcript. One of the few recorded long-form interviews with Dijkstra, a year before his death. University Digital Conservancy (archived)

E

Douglas Engelbart · Douglas Engelbart and the Mother of All Demos

  • Oral history series, Stanford University Libraries, four sessions December 1986 to April 1987, interviewed by Henry Lowood and Judy Adams. Transcripts. Augmentation research before and after the 1968 demo. Stanford (archived)
  • Interview, Smithsonian Institution (Computerworld Smithsonian Awards program). Transcript. NMAH (archived)

F

Federico Faggin · Federico Faggin and the Microprocessor

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, 2004, interviewed by Gardner Hendrie. Transcript, 139 pages. Silicon-gate MOS at Fairchild, the Intel 4004 and 8008, founding Zilog. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Oral history, IEEE History Center. Transcript. ETHW (archived)

G

Bill Gates · Bill Gates and Microsoft

  • Video history, Smithsonian Institution, 1993, interviewed by David Allison (Computerworld Smithsonian Awards). Transcript. Lakeside, the PDP-10, founding Microsoft, the early PC products. NMAH (archived)
  • Raw interview footage, 1990, for The Machine That Changed the World. Video. GBH Open Vault

Adele Goldberg · Adele Goldberg and Smalltalk

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, May 10, 2010, interviewed by John Mashey. Video and transcript. University of Chicago, Xerox PARC and Smalltalk, founding ParcPlace Systems. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Oral history, IEEE History Center. ETHW (archived)

Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali · Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali

  • Turing Award interview with Shafi Goldwasser, ACM, November 23, 2017, interviewed by Alon Rosen at the Weizmann Institute. Video and transcript, over three hours. Probabilistic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, interactive proofs. ACM interview
  • Turing Award interview with Silvio Micali, ACM, August 5, 2016, interviewed by Stephen Ibaraki. Video and transcript. ACM interview

James Gosling · James Gosling and Java

  • Oral history in two parts, Computer History Museum, March 15, 2019, interviewed by Hansen Hsu and Marc Weber. Transcripts. Emacs on Unix, the NeWS window system, Oak and the birth of Java, “write once, run anywhere.” Part 1, Part 2

H

Margaret Hamilton · Margaret Hamilton and the Apollo Software

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, April 13, 2017, interviewed by David C. Brock in Boston. Video and transcript. SAGE, Apollo Guidance Computer software, the Apollo 8 and 11 stories firsthand. CHM catalog (archived)

Tony Hoare · Tony Hoare and the Science of Programming

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, 2006, interviewed by Jonathan P. Bowen. Transcript. Elliott 803, ALGOL 60, Quicksort, Hoare logic, CSP. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Turing Award interview, ACM, interviewed by Cliff Jones. Transcript. ACM transcript PDF (archived)

Grace Hopper · Grace Hopper: The Queen of Code

  • Oral history, Smithsonian Computer Oral History Collection, five sessions 1968 to 1972. Transcripts. Harvard Mark I, UNIVAC, the first compilers, told two decades before the late-career fame. Smithsonian SOVA, collection NMAH.AC.0196

J

Steve Jobs · Steve Jobs and Apple

  • Oral history, Smithsonian Institution, April 20, 1995, interviewed by Daniel Morrow (Computerworld Smithsonian Awards). Video and transcript, about 80 minutes. Recorded in the NeXT years, before the Apple return: candid on Apple’s decline and on the web’s future. NMAH (archived)
  • Raw interview footage, 1990, for The Machine That Changed the World. Video. GBH Open Vault (archived)

Bill Joy · Bill Joy: The Other Sun Founder

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, interviewed by Alex Bochannek. Transcript. Berkeley Unix and BSD, vi, TCP/IP in the kernel, co-founding Sun, SPARC and Java. CHM catalog

K

Bob Kahn · Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, interviewed by Vint Cerf: one internet founder interviewing the other. Transcript. CHM transcript PDF (archived)

Alan Kay · Alan Kay and Smalltalk

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, November 5, 2008, interviewed by Dag Spicer. Transcript. Xerox PARC, the Dynabook, and his reading of computing’s history. CHM catalog

Brian Kernighan · Brian Kernighan and the Unix Tools

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, interviewed by John Mashey. Transcript. Bell Labs, Unix, AWK, RATFOR and Software Tools, co-writing The C Programming Language. CHM catalog

Jack Kilby · Jack Kilby and the Integrated Circuit

  • Oral history, Charles Babbage Institute, June 21, 1984, interviewed by Arthur L. Norberg in Dallas. Transcript, 69 pages. Centralab, Texas Instruments, the 1958 integrated circuit, the pocket calculator. University Digital Conservancy
  • Oral history, IEEE History Center, December 2, 1975, interviewed by Michael Wolff. Transcript. ETHW

Donald Knuth · Donald Knuth and the Art of Programming

L

Butler Lampson · Butler Lampson and Xerox PARC

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, interviewed by Alan Kay. Transcript, 74 pages. Project Genie, the founding of Xerox PARC, the Alto, and computer security. CHM catalog
  • Oral history, Charles Babbage Institute, December 11, 2014, interviewed by Jeffrey R. Yost. Transcript, focused on security research. University Digital Conservancy

Leslie Lamport · Leslie Lamport and Distributed Systems

  • Turing Award interview, ACM, August 12 and November 11, 2016, interviewed by Roy Levin. Video and transcript, over five hours across two sessions. Logical clocks, Paxos, LaTeX. ACM (archived)

Barbara Liskov · Barbara Liskov and Data Abstraction

  • Turing Award interview, ACM. Video and transcript. ACM (archived)

M

Bob Metcalfe · Bob Metcalfe and Ethernet

  • Oral history in two parts, Computer History Museum, 2006–2007, interviewed by Len Shustek. Transcripts. MIT and Harvard, ARPANET, inventing Ethernet at Xerox PARC, the DEC-Intel-Xerox standard, founding 3Com. Part 1 (archived), Part 2 (archived)
  • Oral history, IEEE History Center. ETHW (archived)

Robin Milner · Robin Milner

  • Interview, September 3, 2003, Cambridge, conducted by Martin Berger (published in Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science). Transcript. LCF and ML, CCS and the pi-calculus, the theory of concurrency. University of Sussex

Marvin Minsky · Marvin Minsky and the MIT AI Lab

  • Life-story interview, Web of Stories. Video in over 100 short segments. SNARC, the AI Lab, Kubrick and 2001, decades of AI debates. Web of Stories (archived)

Gordon Moore · Gordon Moore and Moore’s Law

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum (SEMI collection), interviewed by Craig Addison. Transcript. Semiconductor manufacturing from Shockley to Intel, and the durability of his law. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Oral history panel with Arthur Rock, Computer History Museum, moderated by Doug Fairbairn and John Hollar. Video, about 80 minutes: Intel’s founding told by founder and financier together. CHM catalog (archived)

N

Ted Nelson · Ted Nelson and Hypertext

  • Raw interview footage, 1990, for The Machine That Changed the World. Video. Hypertext and Xanadu in his own words, two years before the web spread. GBH Open Vault (archived)

Robert Noyce · Robert Noyce and Fairchild Semiconductor

  • Oral history, IEEE History Center, September 19, 1975, interviewed by Michael F. Wolff, with a 1976 addendum. Transcript. Shockley Semiconductor, the founding of Fairchild, the planar integrated circuit. ETHW

P

Judea Pearl · Judea Pearl and the Causal Revolution

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum (co-sponsored with ACM), July 26, 2022, interviewed by David C. Brock in Encino, CA. Video and transcript, over three hours. Bayesian networks, causal inference, the do-calculus. CHM catalog (archived)
  • Turing Award interview, ACM, 2011, interviewed by Robert Bingham in Boston. Transcript. ACM transcript PDF (archived)

Jon Postel · Jon Postel

  • Interview, Computer History Museum, interviewed by James L. Pelkey. Transcript. ARPANET, the RFC series, TCP/IP, and running the IANA and the internet’s numbers. CHM catalog
  • Biography and materials, IEEE History Center. ETHW

R

Larry Roberts · Larry Roberts and ARPANET

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, interviewed by James L. Pelkey. Transcript. Running the ARPANET program at ARPA’s IPTO, packet switching, the first nodes in 1969. CHM catalog

S

Jean Sammet · Jean Sammet and COBOL

  • Oral history, IEEE History Center. Transcript. The COBOL committee, FORMAC, and her lifelong history of programming languages. ETHW (archived)

Michael Stonebraker · Michael Stonebraker and Postgres

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum (Software Industry SIG), August 23, 2007, interviewed by Burton Grad. Transcript. Ingres, Postgres, the string of database startups, the “one size fits all” argument. CHM catalog
  • Turing Award interview, ACM, 2014. Video and transcript. ACM transcript PDF

Bjarne Stroustrup · Bjarne Stroustrup and C++

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, February 5, 2015, interviewed by Paul McJones (2015 Fellow Award). Video and transcript. Aarhus and Cambridge, Simula’s influence, C with Classes and C++ at Bell Labs. CHM catalog

Ivan Sutherland · Ivan Sutherland and Sketchpad

  • Oral history in two parts, Computer History Museum, February 3, 2017, interviewed by Bob Sproull and David C. Brock. Video and transcripts. Childhood projects with Edmund Berkeley, Sketchpad, ARPA, asynchronous circuits. Part 1 (archived), Part 2 (archived)

T

Andrew Tanenbaum · Andrew Tanenbaum and MINIX

  • Interview, IEEE Computer Society “Computing Conversations,” interviewed by Charles Severance. Video and article. The motivation for MINIX, the textbook, and its influence on the young Linus Torvalds. IEEE Computer Society

Larry Tesler · Larry Tesler and the War on Modes

  • Oral history in three parts, Computer History Museum, 2016–2017. Transcripts. Xerox PARC, Gypsy and modeless editing, cut/copy/paste, the Lisa and Macintosh, Apple’s Advanced Technology Group. Part 1 (archived), Part 2 (archived), Part 3 (archived)

Ken Thompson · Ken Thompson and Unix

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, 2005, interviewed by John Mashey. Transcript. Unix’s origins, B and C, Belle, Plan 9. CHM transcript PDF (archived)

V

Guido van Rossum · Guido van Rossum and Python

  • Oral history in two parts, Computer History Museum, 2018, interviewed by Hansen Hsu. Video and transcripts. CWI and the ABC language, designing Python, indentation and modules, the Python Software Foundation. Part 1, Part 2

W

John Warnock · John Warnock and PostScript

  • Oral history in two parts, Computer History Museum, interviewed by David C. Brock. Transcripts. Xerox Interpress, founding Adobe with Charles Geschke, PostScript, font licensing, the PDF. Part 1, Part 2

Maurice Wilkes · Maurice Wilkes and EDSAC

  • Life-story interview, British Library National Life Stories (“An Oral History of British Science”), 2010, interviewed by Thomas Lean. Audio and transcript. EDSAC, subroutines, microprogramming, the Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory. British Library
  • Interview, Smithsonian Computer Oral History Collection. Transcript. Smithsonian, NMAH.AC.0196

Sophie Wilson · Sophie Wilson and ARM

  • Oral history, Computer History Museum, 2012 Fellow Award. Video and transcript. Acorn, the BBC Micro and BBC BASIC, designing the ARM instruction set with Steve Furber. CHM catalog

Niklaus Wirth · Niklaus Wirth and Pascal

  • Turing Award oral history, ACM, interviewed by Elena Trichina. Transcript. Algol-W, Pascal and the portable P-code compiler, Modula, Oberon. ACM transcript PDF (archived)
  • Biography and materials, IEEE History Center. ETHW

Steve Wozniak · Steve Wozniak: The Engineer’s Apple

Z

Konrad Zuse · Konrad Zuse and the Z3

  • Interview segments in The Machine That Changed the World (WGBH/BBC, 1992), episode “Giant Brains”. Video. Source of his line “You could say I was too lazy to calculate, so I invented the computer.” Episodes archived at Waxy.org

📚 Sources