Ted Nelson Joins Autodesk

This is the press release we issued on the event of Ted Nelson joining Autodesk.

Sausalito, California, April 8, 1988 -- Autodesk, Inc. announced today the appointment of Theodor Holm Nelson as a Distinguished Fellow. Ted will work in the Technology department at Autodesk's Sausalito office. Mr. Nelson, a world-famous visionary in computing, is one of the original developers of the hypertext concept and coined the term ``hypertext'' itself in the early 1960's. In 1979 Mr. Nelson joined with several others to found Xanadu Operating Company to develop hypertext as a commercial reality. Autodesk announced earlier this week that it had agreed to acquire an 80% interest in Xanadu.

  Ted, a prolific author, has written numerous volumes, two of which are considered classics in the field: Literary Machines and Computer Lib/Dream Machines (recently re-issued by Microsoft Press). ``Autodesk has always been committed to be the technological leader in the software industry,'' said Eric Lyons, Director of Technology at Autodesk. ``We look forward to Ted's agile and prolific mind helping us to achieve that goal.''

  Ted Nelson--the man TIME magazine called ``[one of] the   brightest stars in computerdom'', the man Howard Rheingold, in Tools for Thought, called ``the most outrageous and probably the funniest of   the `infonauts''', the man Playgirl's American Bachelor's Register called ``the mad poet of computerdom''--Ted Nelson, maverick software designer, flamboyant legend, idealistic prognosticator, eloquent generalist, and now Distinguished Fellow at Autodesk.

Ted Nelson is where he belongs.