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Oral_History_of_Rich_Page

Oral History of Rich Page

Richard A. Page (born May 15, 1951) is a hardware engineer who was part of the Apple Lisa development team and also contributed to the Macintosh at Apple Computer. He became an Apple Fellow in 1983.[1]

Early life and education[]

Page was born in Vallejo, California in 1951 and grew up in Belmont, near San Francisco. He received his bachelor's degrees in math and physics and master's degree in computer science from San Jose State University.[2]

Career[]

Page first worked at Fairchild Semiconductor while still in college in 1972. He was then recruited by John Couch to work on the HP 3000 minicomputer at Hewlett-Packard.[2]

Apple Computer[]

Lisa development team

Rich Page (bearded) and the Lisa development team.

Page was recruited by co-founder Steve Jobs to join Apple Computer at the urging of Couch, who himself had joined Apple in 1978.[2] Page became responsible for the decision to use the Motorola 68000 processor in the Lisa and the first Macintosh 128K. He then prototyped Apple's first portable computer and 68020-based system. The 68020 prototype, named "Big Mac", was used to develop MacPaint 2.0. However, it was passed over for a NuBus slot-based design that was used for the Macintosh II.[2][3]

After Apple[]

NeXT founding employees

Page (bearded, back row) and the founding members of NeXT.

When Steve Jobs left the company in 1985, Page also left and joined Jobs as a founding member of NeXT. As Vice President of Digital Hardware Engineering, Page was responsible for developing the NeXTcube and NeXTstation. He left NeXT in 1992, shortly before its hardware division was closed.[4]

Page became executive chairman of Chowbotics, a food preparation robotics company.[5]

References[]

  1. Credit Where Due by Andy Hertzfeld, Folklore.org, January 1983. Retrieved May 26, 2006.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Artifact Details: Page, Rich oral history, Computer History Museum. 2018-11-07.
  3. Evolution Of A Classic by David Ramsey, Folklore. 1986-03.
  4. People by Rixstep, The NeXTonian. Accessed 2020-06-11.
  5. Chowbotics Takes Sally The Salad Robot On Tour by Emily Jed, Vending Times. 2018-04-05.

External links[]

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