TI99ers Hall of Fame - Bruce Harrison

Bruce Harrison attended Pennsylvania State University with the aid of a US Navy grant, and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. He continued his career with the navy, working on a whole range of electronic systems, including radar, Air Traffic Control and computer driven displays while based at the Bureau of Ships in Washington, D.C. A few years before his retirement in 1991, he joined the Defense Communications Agency, working on many classified projects inside a locked vault.

Fortunately for the TI community, the navy had persuaded him to buy a TI-99/4A in 1983 to learn to become 'computer literate'. Their support did not extend to financing, so Bruce had to start off with a minimal system comprised of a TI-99/4A console, cassette recorder, and Extended Basic. Luckily this was available from Sears by that time at closeout prices! Eventually Bruce was able to upgrade his system with a PE Box and printer, and also the Editor/Assembler package.

Success with assembly programming requires a natural inborn aptitude, in the same way as does musical ability. Bruce showed this talent in abundance, his progress from grasping the rudiments through to complete mastery being almost entirely self taught. From the skill level he developed, he was able to produce a series of over 80 articles on all aspects of assembly programming for publication in MICROpendium.

The range of his programs, now all released to public domain, encompasses utilities, games, an Extended Basic compiler, graphics and music. The extensive series of Harrison music disks were initially transcribed for computer conversion by his musician wife, Dolores, who brought to the TI a breadth of classical music interpretation that was not to be found on any other home computers of the time.

A heart attack in 2000 robbed Bruce of some of his energy, but he has recovered sufficiently to be currently active with many Personal Computer related projects including Web design, photography and writing science fiction for publication on the Web.

It seems that Bruce's cat, which frequently got into mischief, had an attitude to match Bruce's. There was a detente between Bruce and his cat, but down deep they had great affection for each other as seen in the picture of Bruce and the cat.

Bruce unexpectedly passed away on November 10, 2007 at his home Hyattsville, Maryland.

Click below to view a video of Bruce doing a presentation at a Lima UG computer fair (1990). (Courtesy of Bruce Maret of Video 99 - About 39 Minutes)

- Low Quality (11.2 MB)
- Medium Quality (88.8 MB)