Walter Gibbs

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Dr. Walter Gibbs (PhD) is a supporting character in TRON. He is the founder of ENCOM and a mentor to Lora Baines.

Biography
On July 22nd, 1972, Dr. Walter Gibbs (PhD) founded what would later become ENCOM within his own garage. As ENCOM was just beginning, Gibbs had written a prototype "chess program" that, with upgrades and modifications added on years later by Ed Dillinger, would eventually evolve and grow uncontrollably into the MCP. Gibbs also wrote the Dumont program for handling all communication between users and programs. Despite his status as ENCOM's founder, Walter had been pushed out by Dillinger from any position of authority running the company. But he remained with ENCOM working with Lora Baines on the digitization technology, which suggests that Gibbs was retained as head of ENCOM's research & development division.

TRON
When Dillinger heavily restricted access to the company's computer systems, Gibbs voiced his concerns towards this directive and also towards Dillinger and ENCOM's overdependence on the MCP, and expressed his unhappiness with the directions Dillinger was taking the company. After Dillinger responded with an implied threat to have Gibbs dismissed altogether from ENCOM, Walter retorted back:

"You can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it. And our spirit remains in every program we designed for this computer."

Walter Gibbs never knew that what he said had become almost literally true. Some of the programs within the computer system had developed into avatars of the very people who wrote them (the Dumont program being an alter-ego of Gibbs himself). And then what Gibbs had said soon became prophetic for Kevin Flynn, who would be transported entirely into the Game Grid, and encountered Walter's program Dumont. This would do so again years later in Flynn's own TRON system.

Post-TRON
Walter's place at ENCOM, after Dillinger was deposed, is unrevealed. But, as was the case with Alan and Lora, it is extremely likely that newly promoted CEO Flynn also re-promoted Walter Gibbs very generously.