January 11, 2015 marks the 44th anniversary of the first known appearance in print of the name “Silicon Valley.”
Christie’s auction sale notice of the only known phase-shift oscillator circuit built by Nobel Prize winner Jack Kilby in private hands proclaimed him as the inventor “of the integrated circuit on a single chip.” While he played an important role in the development of the IC, Kilby’s 1958 prototype was but one of many
Remarkable People
Late one afternoon in the fall of 1974, in the sleepy California seaside town of Pacific Grove, programmer Gary Kildall and electronic engineer John Torode “retired for the evening to take on the simpler task of emptying a jug of not-so-good red wine … and speculating on the future of our new software tool”.
Elizabethan philosopher, statesman, and scientist Sir Francis Bacon observed that “once the right path is followed, discoveries in limitless number will arise from the growing stock of knowledge.” This pattern was readily apparent in the history of the diode, it was repeated in the development of the next great leap fo
The inventors of the transistor and the integrated circuit received Nobel Prizes. The engineering community marks anniversaries of their conception with conferences, banquets, and awards. Occasionally they are even celebrated in the popular media. So why has no one heard of the inventor of the diode?
Remarkable People
Bob Taylor planned to be a Methodist minister, like his father. He ended up an evangelist for an idea that changed the world: easy-to-use computers that talk to each other. “I was never interested in the computer as a mathematical device, but as a communication device,” Taylor said.
In 2013, the Computer History Museum honored Ed Catmull as a CHM Fellow. Fellows are unique individuals who have made a major difference to computing and to the world around them.
From the Collection, Remarkable People
