Mary Ann Horton (born Mark R. Horton, November 21, 1955), is a Usenet and Internet pioneer. Horton contributed to Berkeley UNIX (BSD), including the vi editor and terminfo database, created the first email binary attachment tool uuencode, and led the growth of Usenet in the 1980s. Horton successfully requested the first transgender-inclusive language added to the Equal Employment Policy in a large American company, and championed the language and insurance coverage of transgender health benefits at other companies. Horton is a computer scientist and a transgender educator and activist.
Education Horton was born in Richland, Washington, and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Finding an interest in computer programming in 1970, Horton moved to San Diego County in 1971, and quickly fell in love with California. She graduated from San Dieguito High School in 1973. Earning a BSCS from the University of Southern California in 1976, Horton went on to obtain an MSCS at the University of Wisconsin, and transfer to the University of California at Berkeley in 1978, earning a PhD in Computer Science in 1981. Horton was introduced to UNIX at Wisconsin, creating an enhanced UNIX text editor called hed. At Berkeley, she contributed to the development of Berkeley UNIX, including the vi text editor, and created uuencode (the first mechanism for binary Email attachments), w and load averages, termcap, and curses. Her PhD dissertation was the creation of a new type of syntax-directed editor with a textual interface. This technology was later used to create computer-aided software engineering tools. In 1980, Horton brought Usenet's A News system to Berkeley and began to champion its growth from a 10-site network. To Usenet's original dialup UUCP technology, she added support for Berknet and ARPANET, and added a gateway between several popular ARPANET mailing lists and usenet "fa" newsgroups. In 1981, high school student Matt Glickman asked Horton for a spring break project, and the two designed and implemented B News, which offered major performance and user interface improvements needed to keep up with the explosive growth of Usenet traffic volume.
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