Johnny Barrett began his engineering career as a research and development staff member in Texas Instruments’ Government Products Group, where he worked as a System Engineer using digital computing for modeling and simulation, system performance analysis and signal processing. His developments contributed to technical advancements in radar, cryptographic systems, naval sensing systems and manufacturing.
He earned a BS in mathematics from UT Arlington in 1967 and an MS in mathematics from Southern Methodist in 1974. “At the time I was going to school, I had no idea the immediate impact my coursework would have on my career,” Mr. Barrett reflected, “The early class in Fortran gave me immediate advantage in skills and computational tools to apply. It made me competitive in the marketplace.”
His computing architecture developments for digital computing processors led to his promotion to processor development manager for TI’s Consumer Products unit. His innovative design of the single integrated circuit for programmable calculators provided a major step in the introduction of affordable technical calculators.
Regarding his consumer products experience, Mr. Barrett recounted an incident that showed the competitive pressures in new technology industries. “On one business trip to Japan, I visited Sony Corp to discuss technology transfer. I met a man who told me that he had been the manager on Sony’s single processor programmable calculator program. He found it quite amusing that he got to meet the TI engineer whose product beat his to market and caused Sony to scrap their project. Competition was fierce in the calculator business and first-to-market strategies along with cost/profit strategies drove technology hard.”
Through a progression of technical management positions in TI’s Consumer Products Group, Mr. Barrett led teams of technical innovators who developed computing architectures and software for TI’s calculators and the famous Speak & SpellTM educational toy line. An outgrowth of TI’s research into speech synthesis, the Speak & Spell was the first of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & Read and Speak & Math. The Speak & Spell is featured in various electronics museums such as the Computer History Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History due to its seminal influence in the field of modern speech synthesis.
Mr. Barrett said, “Paul Breedlove, Larry Brantingham and George Doddington were the inventors who contributed significantly to the Speak & Spell. Their major innovation in fundamental digital speech technology provided me an opportunity to contribute to a number of lesser innovations. Two that come to mind were the transition from speech processing in a research lab to speech processing in a production environment and the production of Solid State Read-Only-Memory modules that provided customers with the application cartridges that expanded the performance and functionality of their unit.”
Mr. Barrett later became Program Manager in TI’s Computer Systems Division guiding the development of TI’s first laptop computer. Under the watchful eye of George Heilmeier, Father of the Liquid Crystal Display and Chief Technical Officer of Texas Instruments, the laptop team integrated the new display technology with the latest in electronics and Microsoft software to provide TI with one of the early full-featured portable computers.
After TI sold the laptop computer business to Acer, Mr. Barrett returned to North Texas as a software engineering manager for TI’s Electro-Optical Systems and Electronic Systems, a position he held until Raytheon purchased TI’s defense business. At Raytheon, North Texas, he became director of software engineering, where he achieved the industry’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5 performance for software. This achievement, representing one of the first organizations in America with industry’s highest level of software engineering performance, won Mr. Barrett the Raytheon National Quality Award. Prior to his retirement in 2008, he served as the Raytheon Ground Sensor Integration software manager for the U.S. Army’s next generation combat systems.
“I think most people now realize that information networks are making a step-function change in the productivity of mankind,” Mr. Barrett observed. “This is no less true in the combat systems which defend our country. As a result, network systems and software are becoming major components of Department of Defense procurements. The Army’s Future Combat Systems program is intended to introduce this productivity improvement into defense readiness and then find its way into the commercial world.”
Beginning this month, Mr. Barrett becomes the chair of the College of Engineering’s Board of Advisors. He has served on the board since 2005 after having previously served as the chair of the Board of Advisors for the Computer Science and Engineering Department. As UT Arlington sets itself to meet the Texas Legislature’s challenge for achieving National Research University (Tier 1) status, the Board of Advisors is positioning itself to help guide the college to be a significant contributor to the University’s success.
