Having skipped several grades as a result of his enrollment in an experimental school, he began his higher education at Southern Methodist University at the age of 16 in 1948; while there, he was "not a serious student" but "had a good time.

Reflecting his background in experimental psychology and mathematics, he completed research in neuroscience, psychoacoustics and the auditory nervous system as a graduate student.

"[6] After leaving Texas, Taylor taught math and coached basketball for a year at Howey Academy, a co-ed prep school in Florida.

Taylor worked for NASA in Washington, D.C. while the Kennedy administration was backing research and development projects such as the Apollo program for a crewed moon landing.

In late 1962 Taylor met J. C. R. Licklider, who was heading the new Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense.

At the Fall 1968 Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Engelbart, Bill English, Jeff Rulifson and the rest of the Human Augmentation Research Center team at SRI showed on a big screen how he could manipulate a computer remotely located in Menlo Park, while sitting on a San Francisco stage, using his mouse.

Roberts first resisted moving to Washington DC, until Herzfeld reminded the director of Lincoln Laboratory that ARPA dominated its funding.

[13] Licklider continued to provide guidance, and Wesley A. Clark suggested the use of a dedicated computer, called the Interface Message Processor at each node of the network instead of centralized control.

At the 1967 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, a member of Donald Davies' team (Roger Scantlebury) presented their research on packet switching and suggested it for use in the ARPANET.

[14][15] ARPA issued a request for quotation (RFQ) to build the system, which was awarded to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN).

Only 35 years old, he was given an identification card with the military rank equivalent to his civilian position (brigadier general), thus ensuring protection under the Geneva convention if he were captured.

Over the course of several trips to the area, he established a computer center at the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam base in Saigon.

"[13] The election of Richard Nixon to the presidency and ongoing tensions with Roberts (who, despite maintaining a putatively cordial relationship with Taylor, resented his lack of research experience and appointment to the IPTO directorship) also factored in his decision to leave ARPA.

For about a year, he joined Sutherland and David C. Evans at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he had funded a center for research on computer graphics while at ARPA.

Although Taylor played an integral role in recruiting scientists for the laboratory from the ARPA network, physicist and Xerox PARC director George Pake felt that he was an unsuitable candidate to manage the group because he lacked a relevant doctorate and subsequent experience in academic research.

While Taylor eschewed a Pake-proposed research program in computer graphics in favor of largely administering the day-to-day operations of the laboratory from its inception, he acquiesced to the appointment of BBN scientist and ARPA network acquaintance Jerome I. Elkind as titular CSL manager in 1971.

It was quite rare for anything like a personal attack to happen (because people for the most part came into PARC having been blessed by everyone there -- another Taylor rule -- and already knowing how 'to argue reasonably').

However, after one of Elkind's extended absences (stemming from his ongoing involvement in other corporate and government projects), Taylor became the manager of the laboratory in early 1978.

By the end of the year, Taylor and most of the researchers at CSL who had left Xerox were rejoined again, this time in a Computer Corporation, not a copier company.

A coterie of leading computer scientists (including Licklider, Donald Knuth and Dana Scott) expressed their displeasure with Xerox's decision not to retain Taylor in a letter-writing campaign to CEO David Kearns.

Taylor was hired by Ken Olsen of Digital Equipment Corporation, and formed the Systems Research Center in Palo Alto.