Career Highlights

Rudd wrote his first computer program in 1958 while an undergraduate at Harvard. He has been designing and writing software professionally, as well as managing software projects, ever since. His unusually productive career gives him a unique perspective which may be useful to you.

Among his career highlights are:
● Co-inventor of UNIX – with Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (UNIX Oral History Project).
● First published description of a database server, possibly the first database server ever built (A Back-end Computer for Database Management) – as department head and team member.
● First application of UNIX used widely in Bell Labs: (PWB: the  Programmers Workbench) – as department head and team member.
● First automated directory assistance system – as head of a 50-person department.
● First UNIX-based application built for the AT&T telephone companies (DIR/ECT, a system for managing and printing telephone directories) – as head of a 50-person department.
● “3DFS”  –  a UNIX file system including the time dimension. One of the earliest if not the first file system to include the time dimension. Designed and built by Rudd and W. D. Roome.

Since leaving Bell Labs in 1989, Dr Canaday has founded three software companies to market his software.  Currently he enjoys tutoring all ages in computer hardware and software.

Rudd holds the B.A. degree from Harvard and M.S. and PhD. degrees from MIT.