Lorinda Cherry facts for kids

Lorinda Landgraf Cherry (November 18, 1944 – February 2022) was an American computer scientist and programmer. She spent most of her career at Bell Labs. There, she was a key member of the original Unix Lab team for many years. Lorinda Cherry created many important computer tools. These tools helped with math, text formatting, and analyzing written words. She also inspired the creation of other useful programs.

Early Life and Education

Lorinda Cherry was born on November 18, 1944. Her parents were John F. and Evelyn K. Landgraf. She had one sister named Carynn Elizabeth.

In 1966, Cherry earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics. She received this degree from the University of Delaware.

A Career in Computer Science

Lorinda Cherry started working at Bell Labs in 1966. Her first job was as a Technical Assistant. She began in the Acoustics and Speech Research area. Here, she worked on making computer models of how we speak. In 1969, she earned her Master's degree in computer science. This degree was from Stevens Institute of Technology.

At Bell Labs, Cherry worked on several exciting projects. She helped create BEFLIX, a computer language for animation. She also worked on the Atoms program. This program made images of three-dimensional stick-and-ball molecular models. After writing many programs for others, Cherry realized her passion was in creating computer systems herself.

In 1971, Cherry joined the Computing Science Research Center. Here, she focused on computer graphics, word processing, and designing computer languages. One of her first tasks was setting up systems to run an early version of Unix. This version was written in a basic computer language called assembly language. Douglas McIlroy introduced her to the Unix system.

Analyzing Text with Computers

Lorinda Cherry was involved in projects that analyzed text using statistics. In one project, she and Robert Morris found a way to spot typing mistakes. They used groups of two (digrams) and three (trigrams) letters. They also used a list of common English words. This work led to a program called typo. It became the main spell checker for Unix until spell took its place.

In 1976, Cherry became a Member of the Technical Staff (MTS). This gave her more freedom to work on her own ideas. One of her first projects after this promotion used trigrams again. She used them to make the text in a phone book smaller.

Cherry also helped with a project to add natural speaking sounds to computer speech. She developed a tool to identify different parts of speech in sentences. This helped the computer sound more like a human.

Math and Equation Tools

Cherry also worked on tools for mathematics. She and Robert Morris rewrote dc. This was a calculator program that could handle very large numbers. It used a special way of writing math problems called postfix notation. Then, Cherry created bc. This program made dc easier to use by letting people write math problems in the usual way (infix notation).

Cherry started work on eqn, a program for writing equations. Brian Kernighan helped her finish it. Kernighan said eqn was like "auditory syntax." This meant you could write equations in the program just like you would say them out loud.

Her work on a program called libplot later inspired another software package called GNU plotutils.

Creating and Editing Text

Cherry built many tools for creating and editing text. She made changes to the ed editor. She also created form, a program for making form letters. It also had an editor called fed. form was more than just a text generator. It was like a "personal database" for managing information.

Cherry also helped a lot with electronic typesetting. This is the process of preparing text for printing. Many of her contributions were related to troff. She co-wrote a guide on using troff in 1979. Cherry and Mike Lesk created tbl. This tool helped format tables in documents. She also wrote deroff. This program removed all troff commands from a text. Cherry even programmed a video display. This allowed people to see how their documents would look before printing them. She also helped with TeX, another typesetting system.

Analyzing Famous Texts

Cherry, Morris, and Lee E. McMahon analyzed nine different documents. These included some of The Federalist Papers, an article by Mark Twain, and other technical papers. One goal was to see if they could figure out who wrote The Federalist Papers using this analysis. Another part of their research used text compression and a large collection of English texts called the Brown Corpus. They used this to analyze specific words used in Bell System documents.

Cherry developed a way to identify the main topic in a piece of text. She used this method to create the first index for the Unix Manual. This technique was also used for other written works. Cherry also made a small command guide called the "Purple Card." It went with the sixth and seventh editions of the Unix Programmers Manual.

Writer's Workbench

Cherry was deeply involved in creating Bell Labs's Writer's Workbench (wwb). She even called herself the project's "grandmother." The idea came from a professor who wanted a tool to analyze writing style. Cherry updated a program called parts for this project. She also wrote two new programs, style and diction.

Nina Macdonald, a psycholinguist at Bell, led the development of Writer's Workbench. Macdonald asked Cherry for permission to use her parts program. Writer's Workbench used several technologies Cherry had worked on. These included electronic typesetting, parts-of-speech analysis, and statistical text analysis. Macdonald focused on the user-friendly part of the program. Cherry continued to write the code that made it all work behind the scenes.

Cherry and Macdonald wrote articles together about Writer's Workbench. They also presented the software on TV shows like NBC's Today show and WCBS Channel 2 News. After letting Andrew S. Tanenbaum use the program, Cherry noted how these tools could improve writing. She said they help writers realize they have choices and can make changes. This makes them better editors of their own work.

After wwb was released in 1980, Bell Labs used it in writing workshops across the company.

Later Projects and Departure

One of Cherry's last projects involved analyzing phone calls to AT&T Trouble Centers. She looked for patterns in these calls to find bigger problems. This work led to changes in AT&T's internal rules. She was also one of the inventors on a patent for a system to check the status of 911 emergency phone services.

In 1994, Cherry was part of a team that made AT&T's 1-800 numbers available online. This was when the internet was just starting. The team faced many challenges to create this online directory. It became one of the first "Cool links" highlighted by Yahoo!.

Most of Cherry's work was for the Unix environment. However, her work was also included in the Plan 9 operating system. Lorinda Cherry left Bell Labs in 1994.

Personal Life and Passing

Lorinda Cherry joined the Northern New Jersey Region chapter of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) in July 1967. She enjoyed racing cars. Later, she served as a marshal and helped with administrative tasks. She also showed award-winning Doberman Pinscher dogs.

Lorinda Cherry passed away in February 2022. She was 77 years old. She is survived by her sister, Carynn Kelley-Katz.

Honors

• 1988 William G. Giltzow Award—For showing "dedication and service to the NNJR-SCCA."
• 2018 Pioneer in Tech Award—Given by the National Center for Women & Information Technology.