Tom West, 1939–2011

last updated 8 January 2015

Before the publication of Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, in 1981, there was no such thing as the world’s most famous computer engineer, because there were no famous computer engineers. That changed with Kidder’s acclaimed account of the misfits who created the MV/8000 under the leadership of Tom West. But though West enjoyed recognition for his achievement, he resented the forced intimacy of fame. “It offends me when people think they know me because of the book,” he said in 2000.

Born in 1939 in Bronxville, N.Y., the son of an oft-relocated AT&T executive, Joseph Thomas West attended four high schools before being admitted to Amherst College, said The New York Times. An indifferent student, he took time off from school to work at the Smithsonian Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., where he developed an interest in computers. He went to work for Data General in the mid-1970s, “at a time when competition for new products in the computer industry was increasingly driven by the threat of obsolescence.”

Racing to develop a 32-bit computer to keep pace with archrival DEC, West “started up a secret back-room, or skunkworks, project” to build what would become the MV/8000. His team, “an esoteric mix of people,” rallied to West’s quirky mix of kindness, blunt criticism, humor, and obsessive single-â€‹mindedness, said TheRegisterâ€‹.com. The MV/8000 “fueled a turnaround in DG’s revenues,” and propelled the company past $1 billion in sales in 1984. But the MV/8000 was soon made obsolete by further advances in computing, and West never duplicated the success he had enjoyed as the father of a new machine.