Bob Bishop

Robert J. "Bob" Bishop (September 1943 — September 28, 2014) was an early employee of Apple Computer who was known for creating the "Apple-Vision" demo for the Apple II computer.

Early life and education
Bishop was born in, and earned a B.S. from the. He moved to California and received a M.S. in physics from the.

Career
Bishop served as a physicist at (JPL) in. One of his projects included, the last mission to the moon.

While at JPL, he became aware of early kit microcomputers, such as the and, but was uninterested. When he heard about the Apple-1 computer, he found his way to Steve Jobs' home to learn more about it and managed to acquire one in October 1976. Bishop was one of the first to upgrade to an Apple II computer (serial number 0013) in July 1977. It was a 16KB model with only a cassette tape interface for data storage and an early ventless case that began to sag from overheating. Bishop brought this to the attention of Apple staff and his case was later replaced with a vented version. Through trial and error, Bishop overcame limited documentation and became one of the first programmers to release games for the Apple II through in. He also wrote Micro-Painter in Applesoft BASIC for the Apple II, which was later released in 1980 by.

Apple Computer
Bishop turned down an offer from Atari in October 1978 and was recruited by Steve Wozniak to join Apple Computer the following December as employee #187. Bishop became a development engineer, sharing an office with Jef Raskin while working with Wozniak in research and development. Bishop's projects included speech recognition and synthesis; he also participated in development of the Apple III with Wendell Sander. However, Bishop was fired on February 25, 1981 by then-CEO Michael Scott along with half of the Apple II engineering team during an event known as "Black Wednesday". Two-thirds of his s had vested by that time. After Scott himself was fired, Bishop declined an offer to return to Apple.

After Apple
Bishop moved to, California and started a radio talk show as "Mr. Logic" that ran at for ten years. After that, he sold his house in Santa Cruz and toured every state in the United States and every province in Canada in a.

In 1995, Bishop and Rich Whicker, another former Apple engineer, collaborated on the development of the programming language for children.