Mr. Walden inevitably enrolled at San Francisco State College (now University) and acquired his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1964. His curiosity in computing grew from a class he took in numerical analysis that included functioning on an IBM personal computer.
After faculty, he went to get the job done for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory as a laptop programmer in the Space Communications Division.
In 1965, he fulfilled Sara Elizabeth Cowles, an instruction administrator, and they married the subsequent yr. He was employed at Bolt Beranek and Newman in 1967. Soon immediately after, the enterprise won a deal to build the 1st I.M.P.
“It was a very smaller group performing alongside one another all the time,” Mr. Walden said in a 1990 interview with the Charles Babbage Institute at the College of Minnesota, an archive and investigate heart specializing in data technology.
“We have been in and out of each and every other’s workplaces and supporting each individual other debug,” he additional.
Each individual discovery drew enjoyment. “We’d operate in and say, ‘Look, I obtained this jogging!’” he claimed.
Mr. Walden remaining Bolt Beranek for a 12 months in 1970 to operate at Norsk Knowledge, encouraging that firm develop a laptop or computer modeled immediately after the I.M.P. He returned to Bolt Beranek in 1971 and stayed until eventually 1995. He afterwards turned an professional in the field of management. An avid laptop or computer historian, he was an editor at the IEEE Annals of the Historical past of Computing, posted by what was at first the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Despite the fact that he did not hold an innovative degree, Mr. Walden received an honorary doctorate from California State University in 2014 for his get the job done on the Arpanet. “He remarked to me on extra than just one situation that he in no way assumed he would get that type of honor,” Alex McKenzie, a previous colleague of Mr. Walden’s, stated in an interview.
In addition to his spouse, Mr. Walden is survived by his son, Luke his brother, Daniel his sister, Velma Walden Hampson and two grandchildren.