I
born Feb. 5, 1914, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.
died Aug. 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kan.
U.S. novelist.
The grandson of the inventor Beat movement . His experimental novels evoke, in deliberately erratic prose, a nightmarish, sometimes wildly humorous world. His early Junkie (1953) frankly describes his experiences as a heroin addict. The Naked Lunch (1959; film, 1991), his best-known work, is preoccupied with homosexuality and police persecution and vividly satirizes the grotesque world of the addict. (Burroughs accidentally killed his second wife while executing a drunken prank.) In his later novels, including The Soft Machine (1961), Nova Express (1964), The Wild Boys (1971), Cities of the Red Night (1981), and The Western Lands (1987), he further experimented with dystopian visions and radical technical devices.
II
born Jan. 28, 1855, Auburn, N.Y., U.S.
died Sept. 15, 1898, Citronelle, Ala.
U.S. inventor.
He was self-supporting from age 15. In 1885 he constructed his first calculating machine; though it proved commercially impractical, he patented a practical model in 1892. This machine was a commercial success, but he died before he could earn much money from it. A year before his death he received the Franklin Institute's John Scott Medal. In 1905 the Burroughs Adding Machine Co. was organized as successor to the company he had started. {{link=Burroughs, William Seward">William S. Burroughs was his grandson.