Robert Kurtz Louden September 01, 1930 – December 09, 2018 Share this obituary Robert Kurtz Louden passed away peacefully surrounded by family on December 9, 2018 at his home in Saratoga at the age of 88. Born in Anderson, Indiana during the Great Depression on September 1, 1930, his family moved several times during his early years while his father searched for a better job before settling in Shaker Heights, Ohio. A 1948 graduate of Shaker Heights High School, he was class Valedictorian and editor of the yearbook.
It was there that he met his future wife of 65 years, Anne Zimmerman. He attended Princeton University, graduating in 1952 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He and Anne married a few months before graduation.
After completing their degrees, Bob and Anne moved to Purdue, Indiana, where he enrolled in a Masters program in engineering, and where their first son Robert Burton was born in 1953. Completing his M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1954, the family moved to Birmingham, Michigan, where Bob began his professional career at General Motors. Their second son David Bruce was born in 1954, followed by third son Jeffrey Hadley in 1957.
In love with California since he first visited a relative there at age 8, he began to plot how to move his young family to the Golden State. As a grad student at Purdue and while at GM, he became fascinated by computers and quickly realized that was to be his path. Hired by IBM in 1963 to work at their San Jose office, the family moved west to a house in the Saratoga hills that summer.
While at IBM he authored a book, Programming the IBM 1130 and 1800 (Prentice Hall, 1967), which went into multiple printings and remained a standard in the field for years. During the mid 60s, he sported two buttons that revealed both his life’s path and that of Silicon Valley: “I pray in Fortran” and “Machine Language will Rise Again” and lectured often about the future of computing. In 1984 he published some of the earliest guides to personal computers, both the TRS-80 and PCjr, before Apple had released the Macintosh, which he also wrote one of the very first programming guides for in 1985.
For the remainder of his professional life which, after IBM, included a long stretch at Memorex and his own software company Louden Associates , he rode the wave of changes that computers ushered in, retaining a youthful optimism in the seemingly boundless possibilities technology offered. He retained a life-long fascination with artificial intelligence and the human/computer interface. A capable pianist and drummer in his youth, he also had a love of boating, water skiing, yachting, and was an avid snow skier and hiker as well.
He and Anne loved to travel, sailing much of the Caribbean. An ardent community member, he held leadership positions with the Saratoga Lions, Mens Club and Historical Society. He was a devoted husband, lovingly caring for Anne after a stroke left her severely disabled in 2008.
He was preceded in death by his wife Anne (d. 2017), and is survived by his sister Mary Alice Hoyt, 3 sons, granddaughters Elizabeth, Sarah, and MaryAnne, and great-grandson Leone Citron Levi, born on Oct. 21, 2018.
His incisive wit and gentle kindness are sorely missed. A Celebration of Life will be held at the Saratoga Foothill Club on Saturday January 12th at 3:00 PM with a Reception immediately following at the family home. For more information contact Hadley Louden.
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