John McDermott
John McDermott researched rule-based expert systems and computer configuration. His original 1980 R1 paper describes turning VAX customer orders into component arrangements and adding missing parts. McDermott and Judith Bachant dated R1 development to 1978 and Digital’s regular use to January 1980. Their 1984 paper examines the ongoing collection, validation and encoding of product knowledge. The system relied on shared CMU tools and Digital contributors. AAAI elected McDermott a Fellow in 1990, when its directory listed him at Digital Equipment Corporation.
- Works
- 125
- Citations
- 9,463
- h-index
- 36
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1978–1980
Developing R1
McDermott and Judith Bachant began developing R1 in December 1978, and Digital Equipment Corporation used it regularly from January 1980. McDermott’s original 1980 paper describes its VAX configuration task. The system converted customer orders into arrangements of components and identified missing parts. Development involved CMU and many Digital contributors.
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1980
Rules for configuration
The original paper explains how R1 used production rules and task knowledge to construct a configuration. It used the OPS4 language developed at Carnegie Mellon and a database of component properties.
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1984
Experience in a production setting
With Judith Bachant, McDermott published R1 Revisited: Four Years in the Trenches in 1984. They described growing product knowledge, new supported systems and an organization for collecting, validating and encoding knowledge. They also explained that the surrounding manufacturing process supplied checks and redundancy. Useful expert-system operation depended on continuing shared work.
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1990
AAAI recognition
AAAI elected McDermott a Fellow in 1990. He was at Digital Equipment Corporation at that election.
Sources and credits
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