Paul Lutus

From Eli's Software Encyclopedia
Paul Lutus
Lutus, Paul
Born May 16, 1945
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Occupation Software Developer


Career

Paul Lutus is a legendary Apple II programmer and renowned “Oregon Hermit”.

Early Life and Engineering

  • Paul Lutus dropped out of school in high school but was self-taught in electronics. He repaired street radios and TVs in San Francisco before landing a job designing dimmable fluorescent lighting for NASA’s Space Shuttle program— winning the contract over degree-holders by presenting his own circuit diagram.
  • In the early 1970s, Lutus wrote a solar-system model for HP programmable calculators, later used for the Viking Mars mission by JPL.

Cabin in the Woods and Embracing Computing

  • Disliking city life and paperwork, he bought a remote plot in Oregon and built a 12×16 cabin—strung a 1,200‑ft extension cord to power his home.
  • Inspired by an Apple II ad, he invested $1,600— about one-third his savings— into buying Apple II serial #16. He had never used a computer before; only programmable calculators

Apple II Programming and Apple Writer

  • He began by publishing programs— like “Apple World,” which graphically rendered a rotating house— sending code to Apple and magazines.
  • In 1979, while drafting an article on relativity, he wrote a word‑processor for himself. Apple bought the rights for $7,500, branded it Apple Writer, and released it as a retail boxed product.
  • Updates followed: Apple Writer 1.1 (1980) added a spell-checker and disk improvements; Apple Writer II (1981) introduced lower-case support and text-wrapping; the IIe release (1983) supported 80 columns; Apple Writer 2.0/2.1 (1984–85) ran under ProDOS. His royalty deal eventually earned him $3 million in a single year (1983).

Recognition and Later Projects

  • He was honored with the 1983 Vollum Award (Reed College) and named Outstanding Oregon Scientist in 1986.
  • Lutus left his cabin after his financial success, later circumnavigated the globe solo on a sailboat (begun in 1988), documented his voyages, photographed Alaskan wildlife, and authored free software such as Arachnophilia (a popular HTML editor).

Philosophy and Legacy

  • He’s regarded as one of the original remote developers, creating breakthrough software from his remote cabin— straddling programming, entrepreneurship, and self-sufficiency.
  • Lutus advocates for developers to embrace both coding and business acumen: he maintained creative control, negotiated royalties, and managed distribution— items now often offloaded to teams.
  • Reflecting on Apple Writer’s impact, it not only made the Apple II a practical office tool (alongside VisiCalc), but also earned Wall Street Journal coverage under the banner “Mountain Hermit Makes Apple Sing”

From humble beginnings as a 7th‑grade dropout tinkering with electronics, Paul Lutus rose to engineer NASA‑rated systems and sold calculator routines to JPL. He then retreated to a remote cabin, dove into Apple II programming, and created Apple Writer— a milestone in personal computing. With multi-million‑dollar royalties and prestigious awards, he left urban life behind, embraced exploration and open‑source coding, and remains an emblem of independent, creative, business‑savvy programming.

List of major works

Links

Retrieved from "https://elisoftware.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Lutus&oldid=94492"
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki