Remembering Alan Shugart, Leading Disk Drive Pioneer

Alan F. Shugart passed away on December 12th of complications following open heart surgery six weeks earlier. He was 76 years old.

Alan Shugart

While he has not been active in the disk drive business for several years his footprint will last for decades. His most visible legacy today is Seagate Technology which he co-founded with Finis Conner in 1979 as Shugart Technology, later to be named Seagate Technology. We know Seagate Technology today as the largest producer of disk drives in the world.

A few months ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the disk drive. Alan was an engineering member of that first development team in San Jose, California. We were colleagues in San Jose during the 50’s and 60’s, Alan was on the disk drive side and I was responsible for systems development. Over this period the disk drive moved from an interesting concept to a fundamental, integral part of every new computer system. We worked closely together to insure the proper trade-offs as we integrated this new medium into an on-line facility. When the IBM S/360 was announced in 1964, after only 5 years in the marketplace, the disk drive had transformed the concept of a modern computer system forever. The success of the early disk drives was due, in no small part, to Alan’s skill, stubbornness and determination. He was known for speaking his mind and not being afraid of whomever he expressed his opinion to. In the end, it was this characteristic that ended his IBM career in 1969. Before he left, however, one of his pet projects was the development of the 8�? floppy disk drive. It was designed for loading microcode into the S/360 mainframes. He knew that there was a much larger potential for this device so he took the idea with him and as the PC business started to emerge he re-incarnated it as the 5.25�? floppy that became the backbone of the early PC products.

Alan Shugart was a true pioneer. Unafraid of the unknown, full of self confidence and a tough task master. His name does not appear in the lights of Broadway but his legacy lies deep within every single disk drive that is produce today.

I shall miss him.

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