Robert S. Barton

Robert S. Barton

Robert Stanley "Bob" Barton (February 13, 1925 – January 28, 2009) was recognized as the chief architect of the Burroughs B5000 and other computers such as the B1700, and a co-inventor of dataflow. Barton's thinking has been broadly influential. As one example, Barton influenced the systems and higher level computer language thinking of Alan Kay who went on to further develop object-oriented programming, co-design Smalltalk, and develop concepts key to modern GUI systems built into the Macintosh and later Microsoft Windows.

Barton designed machines at a more abstract level, not tied to the technology constraints of the time. He employed high-level languages and a stack machine in his design of the Burroughs Corporation B5000 computer. Barton's B5000 design survives in the modern Unisys ClearPath/MCP systems. His work with stack architectures was the first implementation in a mainframe computer. Hewlett-Packard would later use the stack architecture in its HP 3000 computers, and in HP calculators with reverse polish notation.

Barton died on January 28, 2009, in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 83.