Diana Merry

Diana Merry-Shapiro
Diana Merry-Shapiro
Born	1939 (age 85–86); Iowa, USA
Nationality	American
Occupation	Computer programmer
Known for	1st overlapping display windows and ; BitBLT co-inventor

Diana Merry-Shapiro (née Mayhugh; born August 25, 1939)^[1] is an American computer programmer.

Merry-Shapiro was born in Iowa. She graduated from Valparaiso University in 1961.^[2]

In the early 1970s, Merry-Shapiro began working as a secretary for Xerox PARC. She shifted from working as a secretary to becoming a computer programmer with PARC's Learning Research Group.^[3] As one of the original developers of the Smalltalk programming language, she helped write the first system for overlapping display windows.^[4] Merry-Shapiro was also a co-inventor of the BitBLT routines for Smalltalk,^[5]^[6] subroutines for performing computer graphics operations efficiently.

After leaving PARC in 1986, Merry-Shapiro worked as a financial software developer. As of 2003, she was still using Smalltalk as an employee of Suite LLC, a financial consulting firm.^[7] Merry-Shapiro retired in 2014.

Personal life

Merry-Shapiro is a trans woman. She discussed her gender transition and experiences at the Casa Susanna resort in the 2022 documentary Casa Susanna.^[1]

Merry-Shapiro was previously married to a woman named Julie before her gender transition.^[1] In 1968, Merry-Shapiro married Don Merry; they later divorced. Merry-Shapiro met her current spouse, Carol Shapiro, in November 1986.^[2] They live in the New York metropolitan area.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Wolfe, Kathi (2023-06-29). "'Casa Susanna' reveals 1950s underground safe haven for trans women". Washington Blade. Retrieved 2024-12-26.
^ ^a ^b Hsu, Hansen. "Oral History of Diana Merry-Shapiro" (PDF). Computer History Museum. Retrieved 26 December 2024.
^ Moggridge, Bill (2006). "The Mouse and the Desktop: Interviews with Doug Engelbart, Stu Card, Tim Mott, and Larry Tesler". Designing Interactions. MIT Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-262-13474-3.
^ Kay, Alan (1993). "IV. 1972-76: The first real Smalltalk (-72), its birth, applications, and improvements". The Early History Of Smalltalk. Archived from the original on 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
^ Ingalls, Dan (November 19, 1975), Bit BLT (PDF), Xerox Inter-Office Memorandum
^ Guibas, L. J.; Stolfi, J. (July 1982). "A language for bitmap manipulation" (PDF). ACM Transactions on Graphics. 1 (3): 191–214. doi:10.1145/357306.357308. S2CID 12259003. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-11-02.
^ Babcock, Charles (April 28, 2003). "Smalltalk Gets Developers Talking: Interest in decades-old programming language grows as developers use it for Web applications". InformationWeek.

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[x560-1] Wolfe, Kathi (2023-06-29). "'Casa Susanna' reveals 1950s underground safe haven for trans women". Washington Blade. Retrieved 2024-12-26.

[:0-2] Hsu, Hansen. "Oral History of Diana Merry-Shapiro" (PDF). Computer History Museum. Retrieved 26 December 2024.

[3] Moggridge, Bill (2006). "The Mouse and the Desktop: Interviews with Doug Engelbart, Stu Card, Tim Mott, and Larry Tesler". Designing Interactions. MIT Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-262-13474-3.

[4] Kay, Alan (1993). "IV. 1972-76: The first real Smalltalk (-72), its birth, applications, and improvements". The Early History Of Smalltalk. Archived from the original on 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2009-07-15.

[5] Ingalls, Dan (November 19, 1975), Bit BLT (PDF), Xerox Inter-Office Memorandum

[6] Guibas, L. J.; Stolfi, J. (July 1982). "A language for bitmap manipulation" (PDF). ACM Transactions on Graphics. 1 (3): 191–214. doi:10.1145/357306.357308. S2CID 12259003. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-11-02.

[7] Babcock, Charles (April 28, 2003). "Smalltalk Gets Developers Talking: Interest in decades-old programming language grows as developers use it for Web applications". InformationWeek.

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