In October 2015, our colleague and co-founder R. Stockton Gaines passed away. He is missed by all of the Acorn team and his wife Lynn and son Bill. Dr. R. Stockton Gaines founded Acorn Technologies, and will be remembered for his distinguished 40-year career in research, and venture capital.
Until 1995, Dr. Gaines directed a research program at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, addressing issues in parallel computing system architectures, software operating systems and support. He also managed the FAST Electronic Broker project, a successful demonstration of electronic commerce using a novel approach to brokered purchasing using e-Mail. Dr. Gaines’ industry work included consulting on general corporate issues, strategic planning, and management of specific hardware and software projects for numerous high technology companies such as IBM, EMC, Storage Technology, Silicon Graphics, Honeywell, Unisys, Olivetti, Control Data, Philips Data Systems, and Northrop, among many others. He also consulted for a number of venture capital companies including Paragon Venture Partners and Brentwood Associates. Dr. Gaines held a B.S. in Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.