Tribute to Glen Culler

Helen Smith

"There are two ways to move: you can change your location, or you can change your address." Glen Culler had a unique way of looking at the world. He possessed an uncanny knack for providing real-world models for the most abstract of concepts. He worked furiously, at all hours of the day and night. Through it all, he managed to maintain an amiable, collegial atmosphere with his students and work associates. This is my experience with Glen Culler.

In February, 1966, I graduated from UCSB with a BA in math. I was looking for a job. Glen was looking for programmers to work in the Computer Center at North Hall. My previous programming experience must have impressed Glen -- there were no schools of Computer Science in those days. He offered me a job. Thus began an association which would continue until 1971.

My initial duties were to perform program support for the Culler-Fried System on the RW 400 computer, coding in absolute octal machine language. I accompanied the RW 400 to the third floor of the then brand-new Engineering Building. There, with other members of the Computer Research Laboratory, I worked on implementing the Culler-Fried System on the IBM System/360. By then we had progressed to assembly language! When Culler founded Culler-Harrison Inc. in 1969, I left the University with him. At CHI, I provided programming support for a speech analysis system and the development of the CHI-SPS-30 parallel processing computer.

Although I left CHI in 1971, I continued programming computers in the Santa Barbara area until 1976. Then, in a career move of my own, I returned to UCSB to earn a teaching credential.

I currently teach 1st grade in a bilingual English/Spanish classroom in an impoverished community near Palm Springs, California. The problems I encounter daily are very different from finding lost keyboard interrupts or bugs in a disk control routine. However, the lessons from my Culler days remain. I work hard and look at the world just a little differently from everybody else. "There are two ways to move: you can change your location, or you can change your address."

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