Interviewed by David C. Brock on 2024-05-15 in Arlington, VT
© Computer History Museum
This oral history interview with Janice Lourie was recorded on May 15, 2024, in Arlington, Vermont. Janice Lourie was born in 1930, and is best known for her work at IBM on her early computer-assisted design (CAD) system, Textile Graphics. Developed in the mid 1960s, Textile Graphics allowed users to design woven textiles on a graphical terminal, using a light pen and keyboard input. The system could also control automatic looms. For Textile Graphics, Lourie earned IBM’s first software patent. This interview begins with a discussion of Lourie’s family background and youth in Chelsea, Massachusetts in the Boston-Cambridge area.
She discusses her interest in weaving, and her collaborations with Nitta Donner on developing Lourie’s Textile Graphics system. Lourie discusses the IBM pavilion devoted to Textile Graphics as the 1968 World’s Fair, and the transfer of the automatic loom system displayed there to the Fashion Institute of Technology. She discusses the origins of her Textile Graphics project, and her work to secure at patent on it. Lourie traces her involvement with music, and how it led her first into contact with the computer and programming and an eventual position with IBM’s Cambridge Research Center. Lourie discusses her move to an IBM organization in New York City. In the remainder of the interview, she discusses her art practice and her life in Vermont.
The first part of this oral history was recorded as audio, and you can access the transcript here:
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102808982/
- Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information – http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102809000
Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum’s Oral History Collection.
Collection number: 102809001
Acquisition number: 2024.0053
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