Actors - William Martens

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	Actors - William Martens

William Martens (born August 1964) is a computer engineer and magazine editor. He is primarily a programmer who dabbles in the hardware realm and enjoys writing science fiction in addition to writing articles for the magazine Call-A.P.P.L.E., including the long surviving "Bytes from the A.P.P.L.E." a product introduction article. His invention of The Library 1.1 allows A.P.P.L.E to produce the software and document libraries in a matter of seconds covering the entire range of Apple computers.

Early life and inspiration

Bill's early years were spent traveling around the world with his father, Michael, a U.S. Army soldier. His early interests included Rocketry, space exploration, and flying. This may have been due to his stepmother, Betty Martens, being a Westinghouse clean-room supervisor. From an early age, she began putting electronics kits, books on space and satellites and other science related items in his room. Bill built his first radio at age 9 from one of the kits Betty had provided.

Bill's first contact with a computer came in 1976 through a copy of Creative Computing, a popular hobbyist magazine at the time. When Bill moved to Germany with his father in 1977, the school had a DEC PDP/11-4 series computer which had several teletypes attached. This is where his true talents came through. By 1979, Bill was spending more than 5 hours a day in the computer labs at Nuremburg American H.S., working on anything computer related he could. Always seen with his box of computer tapes, it was apparent that this would be his life.

In 1980, Bill returned to the US and once again turned to the computers and by summer of 1981, was working for Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange.

His life at A.P.P.L.E.

Bill joined A.P.P.L.E in Summer 1981. Under the expert tutelage of Michael Christensen and Joff Morgan, Bill began to take an interest in Pascal which was fast becoming the programming language of the modern programmer. In January 1982, Bill began work on the 1981 Pascal Anthology which became a mainstay product for A.P.P.L.E until 1988. In 1989, he moved to Japan to pursue his career in engineering. His first job in Japan was working for a Japanese electronics house designing and programming satellite tranceivers for ships.

In 1985 he created a language which allowed formatting of text and allowed user interaction. File Control Language was only released in small numbers and was soon made obsolete by the introduction of HyperCard. The other thing which led to the quick demise of File Control Language was the fact that is was oriented around the Apple II Series computers and was not ported to any of the other computing platforms of the era.

In 1997, he invented the self producing web system for computer databases, The Library 1.1. This system was a mainstay of the MSCOM software library which has become the surviving system in A.P.P.L.E's efforts to create one of the largest Apple related software and documentation libraries on the internet today.

In 2001, he began to work on restoring A.P.P.L.E and Call-A.P.P.L.E. Magazine. By May 2002, this was a reality with the first newsletter/magazine issue since 1994. Today, the magazine has a distribution of about 14,000 copies per month and continues to enjoy a high percentage of readers who are Apple II specific readers. Bill currently serves as the President of A.P.P.L.E. and is in his second term as President separated by a one year period in which Mike Pfaiffer was President.

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