Lawrence M. Breed is a computer scientist, artist and inventor, best known for his involvement in the APL programming language.

Career

While at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1961, he created the first computer animation language, MACS, and demonstrated it publicly with Earl Boebert.

While getting his M.S. degree at Stanford, he corresponded with APL's inventor, Ken Iverson

Kenneth E. Iverson

Kenneth Eugene Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the APL programming language in 1962. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory...

, to correct the formal description of the IBM System/360 which used Iverson's notation. After he received his M.S. from Stanford in 1965, he followed Iverson east to IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center

Thomas J. Watson Research Center

The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division.The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles north of New York City, a building in Hawthorne, New York, and offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.- Overview :The...

 in Yorktown Heights, New York

Yorktown Heights, New York

Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Yorktown Heights is located at ....

, to create the first implementation of APL, with Philip S. Abrams, on the IBM 7090

IBM 7090

The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation...

 in 1965.

He later created APL implementations for an experimental IBM "Little Computer" in 1966, for the IBM 360 in 1966, and for the IBM 1130

IBM 1130

The IBM 1130 Computing System was introduced in 1965. It was IBM's least-expensive computer to date, and was aimed at price-sensitive, computing-intensive technical markets like education and engineering. It succeeded the IBM 1620 in that market segment. The IBM 1800 was a process control variant...

.

Breed was the 1973 recipient (with Dick Lathwell

Richard H. Lathwell

Richard H. Lathwell was the 1973 recipient of the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery....

 and Roger Moore

Roger Moore (computer scientist)

Roger D. Moore was the 1973 recipient of the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery...

) of the Grace Murray Hopper Award

Grace Murray Hopper Award

The original Grace Murray Hopper Awards have been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery since 1971. The award goes to a young computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or service contribution.-Recipients:* 1971 Donald E. Knuth* 1972 Paul H. Dirksen* 1972 Paul H...

 from the Association for Computing Machinery

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

 "for their work in the design and implementation of APL\360, setting new standards in simplicity, efficiency, reliability and response time for interactive systems."

He co-founded Scientific Time Sharing Corporation

Scientific Time Sharing Corporation

Scientific Time Sharing Corporation was a pioneering timesharing and consulting service company which offered APL from its datacenter in Bethesda, MD to users in the United States and Europe.-History:...

 with Dan Dyer in 1969, and worked there for many years. While there, in 1972, he wrote one of the world's first email systems, called "Mailbox" or "666 BOX".

Eventually Breed rejoined IBM, and continued there until his retirement.

Retirement

After retirement, he became a significant contributor to the Burning Man

Burning Man

Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening...

 festival, under the playa name

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 of Ember. He conceived and built the first "trash fence" that catches windborne debris; created the moving, flaming sculpture "Chaotick"; built artistic bicycle light effects; proofread the Black Rock Gazette newspaper, a role in which he continues as a co-founder and director of its successor the Black Rock Beacon

Black Rock Beacon

The Black Rock Beacon is newspaper made by and for burners. It was started in 2005 by former staff members of the Black Rock Gazette when that newspaper no longer received funding from the Burning Man LLC. This event is viewed in contrary ways by both parties...

, and other Burning Man materials; cleaned up as an Earth Guardian; and invented a widely used evaporator for greywater disposal.

Publications

• Breed, L.M., The APL PLUS File System. Proceedings of SHARE XXXV, p. 392. August 1970.
• Larry Breed, Generalizing APL scalar extension. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 6 Issue 5, July 1971