Jacobs School alumni pose during the reunion as they did for many years at Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle, where they met annually for a group photograph

UCSD Pascal Reunion

By Denine Hagen | November 1, 2004

They came from as far as San Francisco, Oregon and Washington. Like college-aged buddies, these 40-something men and women camped out on floors in their friends' homes. And from the moment Richard Kaufmann booted up a copy of the 24 X 80 monochrome "Welcome to UCSD Pascal" screen, this group of some 50 UCSD alumni were transported back 30 years, when as undergraduates they helped usher in the PC revolution.

They came to attend the UCSD Pascal Reunion Symposium and Dinner, held October 22, 2004 to celebrate the accomplishments of Professor Emeritus Ken Bowles and his team of graduate and undergraduate students. The event was sponsored by the computer science and engineering department at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

"I'm overwhelmed. Words fail me to express my feelings," said Bowles, who was reduced to tears after receiving no less than four standing ovations throughout the day from his former students and colleagues.

Pascal developer and Professor Emeritus Ken Bowles receives a standing ovation at the reunion. His wife, Lou, is seated infront of him

In the mid-70's, Bowles and his team worked late into the night and long through the weekends to modify the original Pascal language and to create a portable programming language and operating system that, for the first time, made micro-processors accessible to the masses, including college students taking introduction to programming classes. The team filled thousands of requests for copies of the p-system at $15 per copy, and by the early-80's, UCSD Pascal was being used as a teaching tool by universities worldwide and was implemented by hundreds of major corporations such as Apple and IBM. Indeed, in the 80's ETS declared Pascal to be the official language for their AP and GRE computer science exams -- which remained true until the late 90's.

Many of the concepts developed through UCSD Pascal are still incorporated today in languages such as Java and Ada. And, according to Apple executive and UCSD alumnus Bud Tribble, UCSD Pascal has been an intellectual ancestor for generations of Apple computers.

Kelly Briggs, associate director of development at the Jacobs School, is Snow White. The "dwarfs" are, from the left, Mark Overgaard, Rick Grunsky, Bruce Sherman, and Chip Chapin. The men are Pascal project members and Jacobs School alumni.

But perhaps as important as the technical legacy of UCSD Pascal is the human legacy. The students who learned in this real-world team engineering environment are now leaders at companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, and their own software companies. As they returned to UCSD and the tie that binds them, they exchanged bear hugs, pictures of their kids, and laughs about their antics at their annual trip to Disneyland. And many came to realize the enormous impact the project had on their lives.

"UCSD Pascal wasn't just a computer science project. It was our lives, our friends and the launching of our careers," said Bruce Sherman, one of the alumni who returned for the event.

"UCSD Pascal would not have been possible without the initiative, involvement and innovation of the students. I wish I could have been part of a team like this as a student," Mohan Paturi, chair of the computer science and engineering department, told the Pascal team members. "You will be an inspiration and role model to our students for generations to come."