Title:
Oral History of Gary Hendrix

Date:
2004-11-19

Interviewer:
Spicer, Dag; interviewer
Hendrix, Gary; interviewee
McClure, James; cameraperson
Grad, Burton; editor

Abstract:
Gary Hendrix discusses in some detail his interest in natural language analysis and machine translations. He covers a number of his Artificial Intelligence related projects at SRI International. He describes how he and 15 other SRI employees formed the Machine Intelligence Corporation and the reasons why it didn’t succeed. He then goes into starting Symantec, how it was financed and the problems of having too many Ph.D.’s and the difficulties of trying to bring a more production-oriented approach to its offerings. He discusses Symantec’s initial products, its organization and its transformation into a publicly-held systems utilities company. This oral history ends with Gary Hendrix leaving Symantec in 1991.

Keywords:
Hendrix, Gary
Artificial intelligence
Natural language translation
Chomsky, Noam
Expert Systems
Systems Research Institute (SRI)
Semantic grammers
David Waltz
LADDER System
Symantec
Rosen, Charlie
Roball
Sacerdoti, Earl
Machine Intelligence Corporation
Lash, Arthur
Shanck, Steve
Doerr, John
Kleiner Perkins
Rayburn, Vern
Rosenthal, Robert
C & E Software
Coleman, Denis
Eubanks, Gordon
Q&A
4 Word
Breakthrough Software
Timeline
Think Technologies
Byers, Tom
Walter, Brett
Norton, Peter

Rights:
Computer History Museum

102657945