Les Earnest
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Lester Donald Earnest was born in the United States on December 17, 1930. He began his career as a computer programmer in 1954 during a stint as a U.S. Navy Aviation Electronics Officer & Digital Computer Project Officer at Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, Pennsylvania [1].
In 1956 Les joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help design the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system. Despite the prowess of Les and his colleagues SAGE was inundated with numerous defects. "It is fortunate that the Soviet Union never attacked the U.S. in that era, because the marvelous technology in SAGE had several 'Achilles heels' that would have caused it to fail catastrophically under attack. However, those shortcomings were kept well hidden from Congress and the public and, as a result, so-called 'command-control-communications' technology became a major growth industry for the military-industrial complex." [2]
Starting in 1959 the focus of his career shifted to innovations within the field of word processing. During this time he was responsible for developing the "first pen-based computer system that reliably recognized cursive writing" [3], and the first spell checker [4].
In the late 1960's Les continued to diversify the types of technologies he involved himself with. He made significant contributions in the fields of robotics through the creation of systems that coupled computer vision with prosthetic and vehicular applications [5].
In 1965, Les became Executive officer at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and he soon became deeply involved with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPAnet) startup committee. This association would lead him to the one innovation he has received the most acclaim for: The invention of the Finger protocol (RFC 742) in the early 1970's.
Accomplishments in computing aside, Les is also a long-time bicycle enthusiast. He has served as director and/or officer in several prominent cycling associations including the U.S. Cycling Federation, the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, and the Federation of Independent Associations for Cycling.
