Jim Butterfield
Canadian computer programmer (1936-2007)
Frank James Butterfield (14 February 1936 – 29 June 2007), was a Canadian computer programmer, author, and television personality known for his work with early microcomputers. He is particularly noted for associations with Commodore Business Machines and the Toronto PET Users Group, for many books and articles on machine language programming, and for educational videos and TV programs.
Early life and career
Jim Butterfield was born on 14 February 1936 in Ponoka, Alberta, which is south of Edmonton. He was the third of four children to James and Nancy Butterfield, who had emigrated from England to farm. In 1953 he won a French scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts. He later attended the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia but dropped out due to lack of interest. One of his first jobs was radio continuity writing in Alberta.
In 1957, Butterfield began working for Canadian National/Canadian Pacific Telecommunications, at first as a microwave technician trainer in Whitehorse. In 1959 Popular Electronics Magazine published his article simplifying then new transistors for the hobbyist. In 1962 he was transferred to Toronto, and within a year was programming CN/CP's mainframe computers.
“Jim Butterfield” enters the record as canadian computer programmer (1936-2007). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Butterfield, Canadian and computer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6193962. VIAF identifies the subject as 93594067. The Library of Congress control number is n78051783. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2007, 1953 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jim Butterfield” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.