Douglas T. Ross Papers

Collection

Identifier: RG 30-261

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The materials of Douglas T. Ross comprise of correspondence, diagrams, programs, clippings, and several scrapbooks. The bulk of the material is made up of scrapbook pages and clippings. The most significant materials are the clippings in Series 3. Dating from 1940s to the 1960s, the clippings document Ross’ significant contribution to the engineering world, through his creation of the Automatically Programmed Tool (APT) during his time working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Of potential interest to scholars in Series 2 are photographs from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. The photographs describe the workings of the APT machinery, giving insights into the newest techniques of the time. Attached to many of the photos are short typed explanations of each step in the development of the technology. Despite the rich record detailing APT, the collection is limited in several respects.

Series 1 describes his time as a student at Oberlin College. He enrolled in 1947 and graduated in 1951 in mathematics, with many of his personal commencement materials included. Additionally, this series contains memorabilia from his future wife’s, Patricia Mott, time at Oberlin College, from which she graduated in 1950. Notably absent are materials of a personal nature, and his life after working at MIT.

Dates

Creation: 1941-1993, undated
Other: Date acquired: 2008 October 14

Creator

Ross, Douglas Taylor (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Unrestricted

Biographical Sketch

Douglas Taylor Ross was a pioneering figure in the explosive growth of computers beginning in the 1950s.

He was born to American medical missionaries on December 21, 1929, in Canton, Republic of China. The family returned to the US shortly afterwards, to Canandaigua, NY. Both his parents were psychiatrists at Brigham Hall, a private psychiatric hospital in Canandaigua.

Ross enrolled at Oberlin in 1947, receiving an AB cum laude in mathematics in 1951. He married Patricia Mott, also a student in math at Oberlin in the class of 1950, in January 1951. That year they moved to Massachusetts for Ross’s graduate work at MIT. In 1952 he joined the Servomechanisms Laboratory in MIT’s electrical engineering department as its only mathematician and began building its renowned Computer Applications Group. He completed the MS degree in 1954.

By 1956 Ross had completed course requirements for a PhD in mathematics, but was unable to finish his doctorate due to his involvement as leader of the 19-company joint effort to deliver the first APT system (Automatically Programmed Tool), a ground- breaking language and system that made numerically controlled manufacturing practical. In addition, he led MIT’s Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Project, including research and development in language theory, language design, generalized compiler construction, computer graphics hardware and software, and design applications. The AED language and system was the world’s first software engineering language and tool system. He taught the first software engineering graduate course anywhere at MIT in spring 1968.

In 1969, Ross founded SofTech Inc. with MIT colleagues, and served as its president until 1975. In the early 1970s his Structured Analysis Design Technique^TM(SADT^TM) extended software technology to include Requirements Definition.

Among his honors are the Joseph Marie Jacquard Memorial Award from the Numerical Control Society in 1975; the Distinguished Contributions Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in 1980; the Honorary Engineer of the Year Award from the San Fernando Valley Engineer’s Council in 1981; the “40 years of CAD” by December 2000 meeting of the Berliner Kreis. Oberlin College conferred upon him an Honorary Doctor of Science degree in 2001. Ross and his wife Pat endowed the Doug Ross Career Development Chair in Software Technology in the EECS Department at MIT.

Doug and Pat Ross lived in Arlington, then Lexington, Massachusetts. They had three children: Jane Louise (1954), Kathryn (1955), and Margaret (1957). Douglas Ross died on January 31, 2007.

Source

Records of Faculty, Staff, and Others (RG 28), Douglas T. Ross file.

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich.