(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4202) Oral history interview with John Backus

[Van Snyder]

There is a transcription of an oral history interview with John Backus
at http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102657970.  The
interviewer is Grady Booch.

He doesn't remember the name BEMA or CBEMA, but he does have one
interesting recollection:

        Backus: Yeah, so that they’d have a uniform thing and they used
        to- that committee used to hold meetings in Los Angeles and
        various places which would mainly be getting together and-- Who
        was it? I guess it was usually Roy who would come-- No. It was a
        guy at North American, not Frank Wagner but another guy, a
        little guy with a moustache. Anyway—

        He used to show up with big bags of liquor and we would have our
        meeting, which was mainly drinking—

        Well, that went on for quite a while. Then it got the bigger
        bosses in the process, they got annoyed with us and sort of got
        it much more sober and productive, but I didn’t participate in
        that.

and some interesting introspections:

        Backus: No. I’m a terribly unscholarly person, and lazy.

        Booch: So Fortran was a way to help deal with that laziness in a
        way. You could do things better—

        Backus: Yeah. That was my motivating force in most of what I
        did, was how to avoid work.