Ted Kaehler

Ted Kaehler is an American computer scientist known for his role in the development of several system methods. He is particularly noted for his contributions to Smalltalk and Squeak programming languages and other technologies developed at Xerox PARC and Apple's HyperCard system.

Kaehler was a son of a mechanical engineer and grew up tinkering with mechanical toys. During the 1960s, he built a computer on his own following an article published in Scientific American. He went to Gunn High School, a public school in Palo Alto. While in high school, Kaehler was accepted to a summer job at Fairchild and during this stint, he learned the programming language Fortran.He then studied at Stanford University where he met Dan Ingalls.

Kaehler was married to Carol Nasby, who also worked at Apple for several years. She died in 1991 due to diabetes complications. He lives with his second wife Cynthia in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Ingalls introduced Kaehler to PARC when he secured a contract with Xerox. They formed a team that included George White, who was already with the company working on a voice recognition software. By 1980s, he was reportedly demonstrating a virtual reality (VR) technology that involved a user in Maze War 3D game. This depiction successfully voiced a response in-world to another in the real world. The development has been touted as the first avatar-centric reference to this kind of VR technology.

Kaehler was also documented as one of the researchers at PARC who briefed Steve Jobs about the company's three innovations: Alto's graphical user interface, Smalltalk, and PARC's Ethernet network..

Smalltalk

Kaehler was part of a group led by Alan Kay who refined the concept of network computing through Smalltalk. This is a system that drew from John McCarthy's LISP programming language as well as the simulation programming languages called Simula 1 and Simula 67, which were developed by the Norwegian Computing Center. In Kay's account of Smalltalk's early development, he cited key milestones attributed to Kaehler. According to Kay, along with Ingalls, Dave Robson, and Diana Merry, for instance, Kaehler successfully implemented the Smalltalk-76 system from scratch within a period of seven months. It constituted 50 classes that composed 180 pages of source code. Kaehler was also credited for designing the virtual memory system OOZE. This system gave Smalltalk more speed, and the development of a system tracer used to clone Smalltalk-76 since the technology can write out new virtual memories from their previous iterations.

In March 1985, Kaehler moved to Apple as a researcher. He became involved in the development of Macintosh computers, primarily providing technical support. Kaehler was, however, more noted for improving other technologies such as the company's HyperCard system from 1985 to 1987. This is a tool that allows users to create entertainment and instructional content. Kaehler added an interface that made it possible to control videodiscs.

Squeak

Kaehler also became part of the open-source community-supported Squeak Central Team in 1996, which also included Ingalls, John Maloney, Scott Wallace, and Andreas Raab. It was initially developed out of the Smalltalk-80 at Apple Research Laboratory and was later continued at Walt Disney Imagineering. Squeak was developed as an open and highly-portable language that is written entirely in Smalltalk and included the EToys system, which allows children to see the software operation. The use of Smalltalk technology allows Squeak to easily debug, analyze, and change. Kaehler was credited for writing the code of the platform's painting system, Squeak Paintbox along with other EToys pilot versions.