In Memory of Lee E. McMahon

December 19, 2011 at 9:29pm

At ManorCare in New Providence, my father-in-law Arne Swenson sits with Gertrude and Helen for meals. I eventually found that Helen's last name is McMahon, and being a Bear's fan, I mentioned Jim McMahon of Chicago Bears and Superbowl Shuffle fame. Helen told me that her husband's name was Lee, and I told her that I had a coworker at Bell Labs named Lee McMahon. I found a photo via Google images, and she said "That's him!"

I worked with Lee McMahon and Bill Marshall on Datakit, a computer network invented by Sandy Fraser in Computer Science Research at Bell Labs Murray Hill. In my mind, I can still picture Lee and Bill in the "Wurlitzer" room which was adjacent to the Unix room in building 2, fifth floor. It was called the Wurlitzer room because the layers of consoles for the Datakit switches resembled a massive organ. Lee and Bill stood at the center of it all.

I can still picture Lee standing in my office doorway to chat about work. He was a chain smoker and would tap ashes into the door latch hole. When I poked him about it he said that there was no problem since the door jamb and walls were all steel. I still wondered at the surprise of a column of ashes for workers doing any remodeling. Lee got throat cancer and a laryngectomy. He returned to work after treatment, and I remember the shock and sympathetic pain that I felt for him as he struggled to speak. We resorted to communicating via pen and paper. Looking back, I can see the interest and effort that he took to encourage me professionally and personally - what a great guy!

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Lee E. McMahon
Public Figure

Description

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lee E. McMahon (1931–1989) was an American computer scientist. He was a graduate of St. Louis University and obtained a Ph.D. in Psychology at Harvard. He worked for Bell labs from 1963 until 1989, and is best known for his contributions to early versions of the Unix operating system, in particular the sed stream editor. He contributed to the development of comm, qsort, grep, index, cref, cu, and Datakit. He also devised the McMahon system tournament.

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