Robert Garner’s career in Silicon Valley spans 36 years of management and engineering beginning in 1977 at Xerox (STAR workstation, PARC VLSI), Sun Microsystems (SPARC, Sun-4), Brocade Communications (Fibre Channel switches), and IBM Research (IceCube, GPFS). In 2003, he volunteered at the Computer History Museum to lead the restoration of a 50-year-old IBM 1401. He recruited and organized a team of retired IBM customer, manufacturing, and software engineers and colleagues, who after five years restored two IBM 1401 tape-oriented systems and vintage punched-card equipment to full functionality. In the fall of 2009, he organized the “50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401” event and in 2013, the 1401 Demo Lab was remodeled and opened up to the general public.
