Top 10 Fun Facts About Robert Morris: Unveiling the Intriguing Life of America's Financier

1. Notorious Wormer to Tech Maestro

Notorious Wormer: Robert Tappan Morris, the world's first digital wriggler, unwittingly wormed his way into history by bringing the Internet to a crawl in 1988: This cheeky coder, infamous for his creation of the Morris worm (the first computer worm on the Internet), later evolved into a venerable tech maestro, co-founding Viaweb, pioneering web applications, and gracing the hallowed halls of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with his tenured presence and eventual election to the National Academy of Engineering.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

2. Ultimate Revolutionary Sugar Daddy

If Robert Morris were alive today, he'd be the ultimate sugar daddy for Patriot seeking arrangements: Not only did he co-found the wildly successful trading company Willing Morris & Company, but he also used his personal credit to finance the entire Continental Army for three whole years during the American Revolution. As the Superintendent of Finance, he kept the army well-supplied and even had a hand in founding the Continental Navy, all while serving on various committees like the Committee of Safety. But keep your money-printing jokes to yourself, for he didn't create the U.S. national currency – instead, he made waves in the US Senate by proposing to assume the war debt and create credit through a national bank.
Source => battlefields.org

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3. National Treasure Meets Debtors' Prison

Move over, Nicolas Cage, there's a new National Treasure protagonist in town: Robert Morris, a key player of the American Revolution, signed all three founding documents, only to find his post-Revolution business ventures land him in the not-so-treasure-filled halls of debtor's prison.
Source => history.com

4. Banknote Supersizing Misconception

You won't find Robert Morris at the banknote printing press, trying to supersize his way out of counterfeiting troubles: In reality, this "Financier of the Revolution" established the Bank of North America - the first national bank in the United States - as Superintendent of Finance from 1781 to 1784, and though he introduced paper currency, the decision to make older bank notes larger was due to printing difficulties, not Morris's masterful monetary mind.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

5. The Wormy Trailblazer

Some worms are just born wild, slithering their way through the world only to go down in history as the naughtiest of all digital reptiles: Meet Robert Morris, the brain behind the Morris worm of 1988, which he created as a mere grad student at Cornell University, but due to a coding hiccup, turned into one of the first major internet-wide denial-of-service attacks, infecting thousands of computers and causing a whole lot of digital headaches. Nowadays, our worm-father is a tenured professor at MIT since 2006, and his wormy masterpiece holds the distinction of being the first conviction under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – talk about a trailblazer!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

6. Born in a Family of Code Whisperers

From codes-n-ciphers to worms-n-whiskers: Robert Morris, the ingenious creator of the first ever computer worm called the "Morris worm," ironically grew up in a family of code whispers! His father was a computer scientist at Bell Labs who worked on the design of Multics and Unix, whereas his mom was a math wizard, teaching her beloved subject. Born in the Garden State, Morris sprouted his academic roots at The Peck School, Delbarton School, and later flourished at Harvard and Cornell University. The Morris worm was his notorious achievement, unveiling it during his time at Cornell as a graduate student.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

7. Techie Family Tree's Apple and Motherboard

Talk about worming his way into our hearts: Robert Morris Jr., the computer scientist behind the notorious Morris Worm of 1988, hails from a techie family tree as his father was none other than Robert Morris Sr., the designer of Multics and Unix and the chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center. The apple doesn't fall far from the motherboard, folks, but it does roll – with Junior venturing into entrepreneurial success with Viaweb and co-founding the venture capital firm Y Combinator!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

8. Viral Worm Catastrophe

In a digital world where "going viral" is the ultimate goal, Robert Morris took it a tad too literally: On November 2, 1988, Morris, a Computer Science grad student at Cornell, unleashed a self-replicating worm on the Internet, which wreaked havoc on computer systems nationwide, including universities, military sites, and even medical research facilities. Morris later faced the consequences and was convicted of computer fraud, receiving three years of probation, a fine of $10,050, and 400 hours of community service.
Source => groups.csail.mit.edu

9. Wealthy Man's School of Hard Knocks

They say money can't buy happiness, and Robert Morris must have felt like he had an all-access pass to the School of Hard Knocks: Despite being one of the United States' wealthiest men, Morris faced a severe financial setback that landed him in debtors' prison from 1799 to 1801, eventually finding relief through the Bankruptcy Act of 1800 and living out his days with his wife in a modest home near Philadelphia.
Source => battlefields.org

10. Worm Pandemonium Sparks Progress

In a case of "Houston, we have a worm": Robert Morris, a cheeky graduate student in 1988, unleashed the notorious Morris Worm on the unsuspecting Internet, bringing it down to its knees and sparking a cyber pandemonium. The frantically scurrying worm forced DARPA to establish the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), which has since facilitated vulnerability mitigation and grown into an extensive network of over 50 national computer security incident response teams. Yay for worm-driven progress!
Source => sei.cmu.edu