computer scientists,
people who do work in computer science, in particular researchers and
authors.
Some persons notable as programmers are
included here because they work in research as well as program. A few of these
people pre-date the invention of the
digital computer; they are now regarded as computer scientists because their
work can be seen as leading to the invention of the computer.
Great people
personally responsible for advancing the state of early computers:
HENRY EDWARD "ED" ROBERTS- Creater of first popular personal computer
- MITS Altair 8800.
Henry Edward "Ed" Roberts (September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010)
was an American engineer,
entrepreneur and medical doctor who invented the first commercially successful
personal computer in 1975. He is most often known as "the father of
the personal computer". He founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in
1970 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but
the first successful product was an electronic calculator kit that was featured
on the cover of the November 1971 issue of Popular
Electronics. The calculators were very successful and sales
topped one million dollars in 1973.
A brutal calculator price war left the
company deeply in debt by 1974. Roberts then developed the Altair 8800 personal computer
that used the new Intel 8080 microprocessor.
This was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular
Electronics, and hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for this $397 computer
kit.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen joined MITS to
develop software and Altair BASIC was Microsoft's first product.
Roberts sold MITS in 1977 and retired to Georgia where he farmed, studied
medicine and eventually became a small-town doctor.
CHARLES INGERHAM PEDDLE- designer of the 6502 CPU and the Commodore
PET 2001 computer.
Charles Ingerham Peddle (born 1937) is an American electrical
engineer best known as the main designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor;
the KIM-1 SBC;
and its successor the Commodore PET personal
computer, both based on the 6502.
Born in Bangor, Maine USA, he worked in a radio station
while in high school and joined the Marine Corps in 1955. He
attended the University
of Maine and afterward went to work for General Electric working
with time sharing systems.
Later, he worked at Motorola from
1973 on the development of the 6800 processor.
Peddle recognized a market for an
ultra-low-price microprocessor and began to champion such a design to
complement the $300 Motorola 6800. His efforts were frustrated by Motorola
management and he was told to drop the project. He then left for MOS Technology, where he headed
the design of the 650x family
of processors; these were made as a $25 answer to the Motorola 6800. The most famous
member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1976, which was priced at
15 percent of the cost of an Intel 8080, and was subsequently
used in many commercial products, including the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo
Entertainment System, Atari 8-bit computers, Oric computers and BBC Micro from Acorn Computers.
The 6502 microprocessor design was also
modified to support other computers while maintaining backwards
compatibility. The 6507 was
the CPU of the Atari 2600.
The 6510 was
used in the Commodore 64.
Peddle left the company in 1980 together
with CBM financer Chris
Fish to found Sirius
Systems Technology. There, Peddle designed the Victor 9000 personal
computer/workstation.
LEE FELSENSTEIN- Designer of early successful
computers - Sol-20, Osborne 1.
Lee Felsenstein (born 1945) is an American computer engineer who played
a central role in the development of the personal computer. He was one of
the original members of the Homebrew
Computer Club and the designer of the Osborne 1, the first
mass-produced portable
computer.
Before the Osborne, Felsenstein designed
the Intel 8080 based "SOL" computer
from Processor Technology, the PennyWhistle modem, and other early "S-100 bus" era designs. His shared-memory alphanumeric video
display design,
the Processor TechnologyVDM-1 video display module board, was
widely copied and became the basis for the standard display architecture of
personal computers.
Many of his designs were leaders in
reducing costs of computer technologies for the purpose of making them
available to large markets. His work featured a concern for the social impact
of technology and was influenced by the philosophy of Ivan Illich. Felsenstein was the
engineer for the Community
Memory project, one of the earliest attempts to place networked
computer terminals in public places to facilitate social interactions among
individuals, in the era before the commercial Internet.
JACK TRAMIEL- Founder and CEO of Commodore computer
company.
Jack Tramiel (Polish: Jacek Trzmiel; December 13,
1928 – April 8, 2012) was a Polish-born Americanbusinessman, best known for
founding Commodore
International, the manufacturer of the Commodore PET, Commodore VIC-20,Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga, and other Commodore models of home computers.
n 1953, while working as a taxi driver,
Tramiel bought a shop in the Bronx to repair office machinery, securing a $25,000
loan for the business from a U.S. Army entitlement. He named it Commodore
Portable Typewriter.
In 1955, Tramiel signed a deal with a
Czechoslovak company to assemble and sell their typewriters in North America.
However, as Czechoslovakia was part of the Warsaw Pact,
they could not be imported directly into the U.S., so Tramiel set up Commodore
Business Machines in Toronto. Tramiel
wanted a military-style name for his company, but names like Admiral and
General were already taken, so he settled on the Commodore name.
In 1962, Commodore went public. But the
arrival of Japanese typewriters in the U.S. market made the selling of
Czechoslovakian typewriters unprofitable. Struggling for cash, the company sold
17% of its stock to Canadian businessman Irving
Gould, taking in $400,000. It used the money to re-launch the company
in the adding machine business, which was profitable
for a time before the Japanese entered that field as well. Stung twice by the
same source, Gould suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to learn why they
were able to outcompete North Americans in their own local markets. It was
during this trip that Tramiel saw the first digital calculators, and decided
that the mechanical adding machine was a dead end.
When Commodore released its first
calculators, combining an LED display from Bowmar and an integrated circuit from Texas
Instruments (TI), it found a ready market. However, after slowly
realizing the size of the market, TI decided to cut Commodore out of the
middle, and released their own calculators at a price point below Commodore's
cost of just the chips. Gould once again rescued the company, injecting another
$3 million, which allowed Commodore to purchase MOS
Technology, Inc. an IC design and semiconductor manufacturer, a
company which had also supplied Commodore with calculator ICs. When their
lead designer, Chuck Peddle, told Tramiel that calculators were a
dead end and computers were the future, Tramiel told him to build one to prove
the point.
Peddle responded with the Commodore
PET, based on his company's MOS Technology 6502 processor. It was
first shown, privately, at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show in 1977, and
soon the company was receiving 50 calls a day from dealers wanting to sell the
computer. The PET would go on to be a success — especially in the
education field, where its all-in-one design was a major advantage. Much of
their success with the PET came from the business decision to sell directly to
large customers, instead of selling to them through a dealer network. The first
PET computers were sold primarily in Europe, where Commodore had also
introduced the first wave of digital handheld calculators.
As prices dropped and the market matured,
the monochrome (green text on black screen) PET was at a disadvantage in the
market when compared to machines like the Apple II and Atari 800,
which offered color graphics, and could be hooked to a television as
an inexpensive display. Commodore responded with the VIC-20, and then
the Commodore 64, which would go on to be the best-selling
home computer of all time The Commodore VIC-20 was the first microcomputer
to sell one million units. The Commodore 64 sold several million units. It was
during this time period that Tramiel coined the famous phrase, "We need to
build computers for the masses, not the classes.
GARY KILDALL- Created the first popular computer operating system - CP/M.
Gary Arlen Kildall (May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an
American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who
created the CP/M operating
system and founded Digital
Research, Inc. (DRI). Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as
fully capable computers rather than equipment controllers and to
organize a company around this concept. He also co-hosted the PBSTV show The Computer Chronicles. Although his
career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in
connection with IBM's
unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP/M for the IBM PC.
BILL GATES- - Microsoft software company - most early home computers ran
Microsoft BASIC.
William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an
American programmer, inventor, business magnate and philanthropist. Gates is the
former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest
personal-computer software company,
which he co-founded with Paul Allen.
He is consistently ranked among the world's
wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to
2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the
wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During his career at
Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software
architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4
percent of the common stock. He
has also authored and co-authored several books.
Gates is one of the best-known
entrepreneurs of the personal
computer revolution. Gates has been criticized
for his business tactics, which have been considered
anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the
courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of
philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable
organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
Gates stepped down as chief executive
officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the
position of chief software architect. In June 2006, Gates announced that he
would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and
full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually
transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie,
chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and
strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He
remains at Microsoft as non-executive chairman.
ADAM OSBORNE - Author, book and software publisher. Founder of
Osborne computer company - marketed first successful portable computer - the
Osborne 01.
Adam Osborne (March 6, 1939 – March 18, 2003)
was a Thailand-born
British-American author, book and software publisher,
and computer designer who founded several companies in the United States and
elsewhere.
Osborne was known to frequent the
famous Homebrew
Computer Club's meetings around 1975. He was best known for creating
the first commercially available portable computer, the Osborne 1, released in April 1981.
It weighed 24.5 pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795—just over half the cost of a
computer from other manufacturers with comparable features—and ran the
popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. It was designed
to fit under an airline seat. At its peak, Osborne
Computer Corporation shipped 10,000 units of "Osborne
1" per month. Osborne was one of the first personal computing pioneers to
understand fully that there was a wide market of buyers who were not computing
hobbyists: the Osborne 1 included word processing and spreadsheet software.
This was at a time when IBM would not
bundle hardware and software with their PCs, selling separately the operating
systems, monitors, and even cables for the monitor.
It is said that in 1983, Adam Osborne
bragged about two advanced new computers his company was developing. These
statements destroyed consumer demand for the Osborne 1, and the resulting
inventory glut forced Osborne Computer to file for bankruptcy on September 13,
1983. This phenomenon, a preannouncement of a new product causing a
catastrophic collapse in demand for older ones, became known as the Osborne effect, but according to
some new sources the real reason for Osborne Computer's bankruptcy was management
errors and insufficient cash flow.
After Osborne Computer's collapse, Adam
Osborne wrote a best-selling memoir of his experience, Hypergrowth:
The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation with John C. Dvorak, which was
published in 1984.
Osborne was also a pioneer in the computer
book field, founding a company in 1972 that specialized in easy-to-read
computer manuals. By 1977, Osborne & Associates had 40 titles in its
catalog. In 1979, it was bought by McGraw-Hill and
continued as an imprint of McGraw-Hill, "Osborne/McGraw-Hill".
In 1984, Osborne founded Paperback Software International
Ltd., a company that specialized in inexpensive computer software. Its
advertisements featured Osborne himself, arguing that if telephone companies
applied the same logic to their pricing as software companies, a telephone
would cost $600. One of its products was VP-Planner, an inexpensive clone of Lotus 1-2-3,
which led to legal
action. In 1987, Lotus sued Paperback Software. As a result of
the lawsuit, consumer confidence waned for Paperback Software, and its revenues
dropped 80% by 1989, preventing the firm from getting venture capital for
expansion. In February 1990, the case went to court and on June 28, the court
ruled that Paperback Software's product, by copying Lotus 1-2-3's look
and menu interface, violated Lotus's copyright.
Osborne stepped down from Paperback Software the same year. Paperback's
database application, VP-Info continued to sell well for many more years, and
acquired a second life as Sharkbase.
STEVE WOZNIAK- the design genius behind the first
Apple computers.
Stephen Gary "Steve" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950), known
as Woz, is an American inventor, computer
engineer and programmer who co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.)
with Steve
Jobs and Ronald Wayne. Wozniak single-handedly invented both
the Apple I and Apple II computers
in the 1970s. These computers contributed significantly to the microcomputer revolution.
Wozniak met Steve Jobs when a
fellow Homestead High School student, Bill Fernandez, introduced them to
each other. In 1970, they became friends when Jobs worked for the summer
at Hewlett-Packard (HP),
where Wozniak was working on a mainframe
computer. In 1971, one year after enrolling, Wozniak withdrew
from the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1976 Wozniak developed the computer that
eventually made him famous. By himself he designed the hardware, circuit board
designs, and operating system for the Apple I. With the Apple I design, he
and Jobs were largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew
Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists interested in
computing. The Club was one of several key centers which established the home
hobbyist era, essentially creating the microcomputer industry over several
years. Unlike other Homebrew designs, the Apple had an easy-to-achieve video
capability that drew a crowd when it was unveiled.
According to Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz, Jobs had the idea to sell the Apple I as a fully
assembled printed
circuit board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by
Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their
grandkids they had had their own company. Together they sold some of their
possessions (such as Wozniak's HP scientific
calculator and Jobs' Volkswagen van),
raised USD $1,300,
and assembled the first boards in Jobs' bedroom and later (when there was no
space left) in Jobs' garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was
filled with monitors, electronic devices, and some computer games Wozniak had
developed.
On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak
formed Apple Computer.
Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge
of research and development at Apple. Wozniak's first personal computer,
the Apple I, was similar to
the Altair 8800, the first
commercially available microcomputer, except it had no provision for internal
expansion cards. With the addition of expansion cards, the Altair could be
attached to a computer terminal and could be programmed in BASIC. The Apple I was purely a hobbyist machine, a
$25 microprocessor (MOS 6502)
on a single-circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4K or 8K bytes of RAM and
a 40-character by 24-row display controller. It lacked a case, power supply,
keyboard, or display, which had to be provided by the user.
The Apple I was priced at $666.66.
(Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and
the mark of the
beast, and "I came up with [it] because I like repeating digits.
Jobs and Wozniak sold their first 50 system boards to Paul Terrell, who was starting a
new computer shop, called the Byte Shop, in Mountain
View, California.
After the success of the Apple I, Wozniak
single handedly designed the Apple II, which was the first personal computer
that had the ability to display color graphics. During the designing stages,
Steve Jobs argued that the Apple II should have two expansion slots, while Wozniak
wanted eight of them. After a heated argument, during which Wozniak had
threatened for Jobs to 'go get himself another computer', they decided to go
with eight slots. The Apple II, or Apple ][, became one of the first highly
successful mass-produced personal computers. It was the first computer with a
color display and had the BASIC programming language built-in.
STEVE JOBS- the great marketer - succeeds by
sheer willpower.
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs ( February
24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur and inventor, best known as the co-founder, chairman,
and CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely
recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the
computer and consumer electronics fields, transforming "one
industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and
movies..." Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive
of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of
directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.
In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one
of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among
the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical
user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year
later, the Macintosh.
He also played a role in introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first
widely available laser printers, to the market.
After a power struggle with the board of
directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development
company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he
acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off
as Pixar. He was credited
in Toy Story (1995) as an
executive producer. He served as CEO and majority shareholder until Disney's
purchase of Pixar in 2006.In 1996, after Apple had failed to deliver its
operating system,Copland, Gil Amelio turned to NeXT
Computer, and the NeXTSTEP platform
became the foundation for the Mac OS X. Jobs
returned to Apple as an advisor, and took control of the company as an interim
CEO. Jobs brought Apple from near bankruptcy to profitability by 1998.
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs oversaw
the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the
services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. The success of
these products and services provided several years of stable financial returns,
and propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company
in 2011. The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many
commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine
tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone
imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively
thinner as his health declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs
resigned in August that year, and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of
respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011.
Jobs received a number of honors and public
recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He has
been referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or simply
"visionary", and has been described as the "Father of the
Digital Revolution", a "master of innovation", and a
"design perfectionist".
JAY MINER- Designed the Atari 400 and 800; the force
behind the Amiga personal computer.
Jay Glenn Miner (May 31, 1932 – June 20, 1994)
was a famous American integrated
circuit designer, known primarily for his work in multimedia chips and as the
"father of the Amiga". He
received a BS in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1959. Miner
started in the electronics industry with a number of designs in the medical world, including a
remote-control pacemaker.
He moved to Atari in the late 1970s. One
of his first successes was to combine an entire breadboard of components into
a single chip, known as the TIA.
The TIA was the display hardware for the Atari 2600, which would go on to
sell millions. After working on the TIA he headed up the design of the
follow-on chip set that would go on to be the basis of the Atari 8-bit
family of home computers, known as ANTIC and CTIA for which he holds a patent.
In the early 1980s Jay, along with other
Atari staffers, had become fed up with management and decamped. They set up
another chipset project under a new company in Santa Clara, called Hi-Toro
(later renamed to Amiga Corporation), where they could have
creative freedom. There, they started to create a new Motorola
68000-based games console, codenamed Lorraine, that could be
upgraded to a computer. To raise money for the Lorraine project, Amiga Corp.
designed and sold joysticks and game cartridges for popular game consoles
such as the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, as well as an odd input device
called the Joyboard,
essentially a joystick the player stood on. Atari continued to be interested in
the team's efforts throughout this period, and funded them with $500,000 in
capital in return for first use of their resulting chipset.
Also in the early 1980s Jay worked on a project
with Intermedics, Inc. to create their first microprocessor-based cardiac
pacemaker. The microprocessor was called Lazarus and the pacemaker was
eventually called Cosmos. Jay was listed co-inventor on two patents.US
patent 4390022, Richard V. Calfee & Jay Miner, "Implantable device
with microprocessor control", issued 1983-06-28, assigned to Intermedics,
Inc. US
patent 4404972, Pat L. Gordon; Richard V. Calfee & Jay Miner,
"Implantable device with microprocessor control", issued 1983-06-28,
assigned to Intermedics, Inc.
The Amiga crew, having continuing serious
financial problems, had sought more monetary support from investors that entire
Spring. Amiga entered in to discussions with Commodore. The discussions ultimately led
to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga outright, which would (from Commodore's
viewpoint) cancel any outstanding contracts - including Atari Inc.'s. So
instead of Amiga delivering the chipset, Commodore delivered a check of
$500,000 to Atari on Amiga's behalf, in effect returning the funds invested
into Amiga for completion of the Lorraine chipset.
Jay worked at Commodore-Amiga for several
years, in Los Gatos, California. They made good progress
at the beginning, but as Commodore management changed, they became marginalized
and the original Amiga staff was fired or left out on a one-by-one basis, until
the entire Los Gatos office was closed. Miner later worked as a consultant for
Commodore until it went bankrupt.
He was known as the 'Padre' (father) of
the Amiga among
Amiga users. The Atari 800 is called the "JM800" by some fans in his
honor.
SIR CLIVE
SINCLAIR- Founder of Sinclair
electronics, Sinclair line of computers.
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (born 30 July 1940) is an English
entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known for his work in consumer
electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
After spending several years as assistant
editor of Practical
Wireless and Instrument Practice, Sinclair
founded Sinclair
Radionics in 1961, where he produced the first slim-line
electronic pocket
calculator in 1972 (the Sinclair
Executive). Sinclair later moved into the production of home computers and produced
the Sinclair ZX80,
the UK's first mass-market home computer for less than GB£100, and later,
with Sinclair
Research, the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum; the latter is widely
recognized for its importance in the early days of the British home computer
industry. Sinclair stated in 2010 that he does not use computers himself, using
the telephone in preference to email.
Knighted in 1983, Sinclair
formed Sinclair
Vehicles and released the Sinclair C5, a battery
electric vehicle that was a commercial failure. Since then
Sinclair has concentrated on personal transport, including the A-bike, a folding bicycle for commuters that weighs 5.5
kilograms (12 lb) and folds down small enough to be carried on public
transport.
ANDREW KAY- Inventor of the DMM, founder of Kaypro,
which created the Kaypro line of portable computers.
Andrew F. Kay (born March 22, 1919) was President
and CEO of Kay Computers, a personal
computer firm, and also serves as Senior Business Advisor to Accelerated Composites,
LLC.
Mr. Kay, a 1940 graduate of MIT, started his career
with Bendix followed
by two years at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later
founded Non-Linear Systems, a manufacturer of digital
instrumentation, in 1952. NLS developed a reputation for providing rugged
durability in critical applications for everything from submarines to
spacecraft. At NLS he invented the digital
voltmeter.
He is also a founder of the Rotary Club of Del Mar, California. As a member of the Board
of Directors of Johnson O'Connor
Research Institute, he has pursued the advancement of education with
particular attention to the development of "a thinking vocabulary" as
a basic component of creating leadership capabilities for managers in science
and technology fields.
THE
BLOGGERS:
FRENCH GRAVA
“I don’t regret the things I’ve done,
I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”
EUNEL ELLISE MORENO
“One of the most important keys to Success is having the
discipline to do what you know you should do, even when you dont feel like
doing it.”
JUNNEL
MIGUEL
“When
you say “It’s hard”, it actually means “I’m not strong enough to fight for it”.
Stop saying its hard. Think positive!”
SOPHIA
MARIE PASCUA
“The
pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. For every challenge
encountered there is opportunity for growth.”
