Alan Shugart

Alan Shugart
Born	September 27, 1930 Los Angeles
Died	Monterey, Calif.
Cause of death	Complications after a heart operation
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	University of Redlands (B.S., 1951)
Occupation	engineer and entrepreneur
Known for	pioneer of the disk drive founder of Shugart Associates and Seagate Technology
Title	CEO of Seagate Technology
Successor	Stephen J. Luczo

Alan Field Shugart (September 27, 1930 – December 12, 2006) was an American engineer, entrepreneur and business executive whose career defined the modern computer disk drive industry.

Personal history

Born in Los Angeles, he graduated from the University of Redlands, receiving a degree in engineering physics.

Shugart was the father of three children: Joanne Shugart (b. 1951, d. 1954), Christopher D. Shugart (b. 12-13-53) and Teri L.K. Shugart (b. 8-13-55), and 4 grandchildren: Carly Erickson (b. 5-26-89), Mitchell Erickson (b. 8-23-91), Andrew Shugart (b. 4-16-80) and Janette Shugart (b. 11-1-85). Shugart was married to Esther Marrs (née Bell), the mother of Shugart's three children, from August 1951 until August 1973. He was married to Rita Shugart (née Kennedy) from 1981 until his death.

Shugart died on December 12, 2006 in Monterey, California of complications from heart surgery he had undergone six weeks earlier.

Career

He began his career at IBM in San Jose, California. He worked on the IBM 305 RAMAC, and rose through a series of increasingly important positions to become the Direct Access Storage Product Manager, responsible for its disk storage products; IBM's most profitable businesses at that time. Among the groups reporting to Shugart was the team that invented the floppy disk.

Shugart joined Memorex in 1969 as Vice President of its Equipment Division and led the development of its 3660 (compatible with IBM 2314) and 3670 (compatible with IBM 3330) disk storage subsystems. His team also developed the Memorex 650, one of the first commercially available Floppy disk drives.

He founded Shugart Associates in February 1973 and resigned as CEO in October 1974. The company was later acquired by Xerox. Then he and Finis Conner started Shugart Technology in 1979, which soon changed its name to Seagate Technology.

With Shugart as Chief Executive Officer, Seagate became the world’s largest independent manufacturer of disk drives and related components. In July 1998, Shugart resigned his positions with Seagate.

Political activity

In 1996 he launched an unsuccessful campaign to elect Ernest, his Bernese Mountain Dog, to Congress. Shugart later wrote about that experience in a book, Ernest Goes to Washington (Well, Not Exactly). He backed a failed ballot initiative in 2000 to give California voters the option of choosing "none of the above" in elections.

Awards

He received the 1997 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award. In 2005, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his lifelong contributions to the creation of the modern disk drive industry."

External links

• Al Shugart's Speech At Conference marking 100th Anniversary of Magnetic Recording, December 14, 1998
• Al Shugart milestones at Computer History Museum
• Al Shugart biography at Computer History Museum