Robert Taylor: ARPANET, Tuskegee Bricks and a 1979 Livingston UFO Case

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This episode works through a Wikipedia disambiguation page for the name Robert Taylor, which spans nearly six centuries, from an English member of parliament who died around 1428 to an American painter of Native American subjects who died in 2025. Robert Robinson Taylor (1868 to 1942) became the first African American graduate of MIT and the first accredited African American architect, then designed buildings at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute with bricks the students made themselves. Robert Rochon Taylor (1897 to 1957), a Chicago banker and housing activist, gave his name to the Robert Taylor Homes, a project later associated with the decay he had fought against.

The list covers the MGM film actor Robert Taylor (1911 to 1969), Bobby Taylor of the Vancouvers, the animator who directed The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat and TaleSpin, and the Australian actor who played Agent Jones in The Matrix. The computer scientist Robert Taylor (1932 to 2017) funded ARPANET and later oversaw the Xerox PARC team that built the Alto. Others broke rules: an English clergyman known as the Radical was imprisoned for blasphemy, and a Scottish forester reported a 1979 encounter that police in West Lothian investigated as an assault.

• At ARPA, Taylor had three terminals on his desk linked to different mainframes and asked for a million dollars to connect them.
• Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars introduced bolt-on necks and cut wood with CNC machines and lasers.
• Two different American Robert Taylors won relay gold: the 4x100 at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 4x400 at the 1975 Pan American Games.
• Robert V. Taylor, born 1958, became the first openly gay Episcopal dean in the United States.
• The forester described spiked spheres grabbing his trousers; police found torn trousers, leg scratches and marks in the soil.