board of directors
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Paul McEnroe Prior |
Upon receiving a BEE Degree, as the Valedictorian of his class at the University of Dayton, Paul was awarded a University Fellowship at Purdue. He graduated with a MSEE from Purdue in 1960. In 1972, while employed at IBM, he received the Degree of Engineer with Special Distinction in Business Administration from the Stanford University Graduate Schools of Electrical Engineering and Business Administration.
Paul began his 23 years with IBM in 1960 as an engineer in a variety of technology and systems projects focusing on electronic scanning. He conducted the initial experiments showing the feasibility of high resolution microfilm scanning for Engineering Drawing Systems and for IBM’s Photo Digital File, a trillion bit file built for atomic laboratories. In the early 1960s, he also proved the feasibility of printing from a CRT to Organic Photoconductor which was followed a few years later by another IBM product. In the mid 1960s, he did state of the art work in facsimile and display systems. In 1969, he was asked to be the development manager of a new business venture for IBM, which would lead the company into the Consumer Transaction section of the Distribution Industry. Having accepted responsibility to develop IBM’s Point of Sale Products for supermarkets and retail stores, he pulled together a team, contributed technically, and led the team to create the Industry’s Universal Product Code (UPC ), now simply known as the “Bar Code”. ( No patent was ever applied for as the technology was published for entry into the public domain.) In the mid 1970s, he received the IBM Award of Excellence for creation of the Supermarket System “from inception through shipment”.
He was also responsible for development of the Retail Industry’s Magnetic Code for Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) marking. This system, still in use today, employs a magnetic stripe on the back of a paper tag which is scanned by a hand held wand. The retail industry required 36 alphanumeric characters, which demanded magnetics rather than the optics which suited the 10 digit supermarket need. The magnetic retail code used a bit encoding scheme similar to that used in the supermarket “Bar Code”.
Other developments for which he was responsible include the Industry’s first LASER product (the bar code scanner), IBM’s first custom designed chip, first intelligent terminal, first distributed (intelligence) system, first token network for terminals, and first hand held wand scanner. All of these technologies, except the wand, were included in the first IBM Point of Sale bar code scanning systems. This enabled an economic solution that would pass the test of time. The Bar Code, and even the Magnetic Code, created by his team had a unique property which minimized errors to the point that would allow them to become ubiquitous. On the business side, he started and managed one of IBM’s first Product Business Units, taking it to a leadership position internationally.
In 1977 and 1978 he was Director of Product Assurance and Director of Technology for IBM’s Systems Communications Division. In 1979 he became Group Director of Systems Development for IBM’s Data Processing Product Group. In this position he managed a technical staff of approximately 400 of IBM’s senior technical people in staff guidance of the development of the majority of IBM’s products. In the early 1980s, the token network above was modified and generalized, under his management, to become the “TOKEN RING” Local Area Network (LAN). It became an international standard and used to connect a large share of the world’s computer systems (second to Ethernet).
In his last IBM assignment, beginning in 1980, he was Director of the Raleigh Laboratory (also known as The IBM Research Triangle Park Laboratory), which was made up of approximately 2000 engineers and programmers. In this capacity, he was responsible for the development and business management of IBM’s communications products, both hardware and software. These products included Local Area Networks, Modems, Point of Sale Systems, Communications Multiplexors, Telecommunications Systems, Display Terminals, Keyboards, including the original IBM PC keyboard, and the software products known as NCP, TCAM, and VTAM, which cumulatively produced revenues in billions of dollars.
In 1984 Paul became Vice President of Engineering for Trilogy Systems Corporation, a wafer scale technology based mainframe computer company, which was the world’s largest start up company to that point in time. Later that year he was appointed President. Upon joining Trilogy, he conducted an audit which recognized earlier flaws in their wafer scale technology. He then led this company through a severe down-sizing, but also developed another new technology, namely, multi-chip modules using a copper polyimide interconnect. In 1986, he worked out a complicated merger, in which he and the entire Trilogy technical team joined Digital Equipment Corporation, who wanted the new technology for their next computer.
In Digital, as Group Manager of Advanced Technology Engineering and Manufacturing, he continued to manage and grow the transferred organization, which had taken responsibility for Advanced Module Technology for Digital’s High Performance Systems. (The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History displayed the Digital module built from this multi-chip technology as well as the Micro Module Systems module which was also developed by this group.) In 1989, the technology being delivered, he became Group Manager, Technical Strategic Relations for Digital. In 1992, Paul retired form Digital, becoming President of the Pathway Group, a consulting firm in Menlo Park.
In 1998, he was honored as “The Most Distinguished Alumnus” by the University of Dayton. In 2001, he received “The Outstanding Electrical Engineer” Award from Purdue University, and a year later became an “Old Master” of Purdue.
Paul is Chairman Emeritus and a Director of the California Engineering Foundation, a member of the President’s Cabinet at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, the CEEM Advisory Board at UCSB, the University of Dayton Engineering Advisory Board, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and formerly, an Executive Committee Member of the Board of Trustees of St. John’s Seminary and St. John’s Seminary College in Camarillo, California, a Director of the Western Commercial Space Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, a Member of California’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Educational Technology, a Director of the Santa Ynez Valley Equestrian Association, and a Director of the Santa Barbara County Cattlemen’s Association. He is a member of Who’s Who Worldwide.
Paul and his wife Tina, a Special Education teacher, reside on Rancho La Purisima, their commercial horse breeding and cattle ranch in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. They have five children.
NOTE: On September 30, 1999 The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington celebrated the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Universal Product Code at a Gala Event in which Paul was recognized and which served as the Grand Opening of an exhibit on “THE BAR CODE”.