Computer Pioneer Robert W. Taylor Dies at 85

Robert W. Taylor, who was instrumental in creating the internet and the modern personal computer, has died. He was 85.

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Taylor, who had Parkinson’s disease, died Thursday at his home in the San Francisco Peninsula community of Woodside, his son, Kurt Taylor, told the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

In 1961, Taylor was a project manager for NASA when he directed funding to Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute, who helped develop the modern computer mouse.

Taylor was working for the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1966 when he shepherded the creation of a single computer network to link ARPA-sponsored researchers at companies and institutions around the country.

Taylor was frustrated that he had to use three separate terminals to communicate with the researchers through their computer systems.