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Hall of Fame Voting For Computer Museum of America
An anonymous reader writes "Public voting has opened for the Computer Museum of America Hall of Fame, which is looking to add 5 more members to the roster via a public vote. Previous inductees include Sid Meier (of Civilization fame), and among this years list of nominees is Linus himself. The full list, along with the voting area itself is over at HomeLAN."
Is this something like being put in "Fred's Museum of Wonder"? I mean the vote is about as professional looking as those poles on CNN where anyone can vote as often as they like. The Museum site at least looks OK but the vote site is some kind of game fan site.
Uhm. Check the current list.
"Stephen Wozniak"
Gates is already in:
Current Inductees. There's a few others that should be on that list though. There's still plenty to choose from for this year, though. Hopefully not everyone will get in on name recognition alone.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I'm not sure whether you meant Dennis Ritchie or Brian Kernighan, but Ritchie is already in there.
Bill's in there too.
Howard Aiken # Designer of the Harvard Mark 1, also known as the IBM ASCC - Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator
Paul Allen# Co-founder of Microsoft
Marc Andreesson # Co-developed first graphical Web browser (NCSA Mosaic)# Co-founder of Netscape
John Perry Barlow # Co-founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation
Andy Bechtolsheim# Co-founder of Sun Microsystems
John Blankenbaker# Developed the KenBak-I computer in 1973, one of the earliest PCs
Len Bosack# Co-founder of Cisco Systems, a leading manufacturer of Internet switching equipment
# Developed IGSP, Inter-Gateway Switching Protocol for the Internet
Stewart Brand# Co-founder (with Larry Brilliant) of The WELL online service (1985)
Dan Bricklin# Co-developer of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program
Larry Brilliant# Co-founder (with Stewart Brand) of The WELL online service (1985)
Steve Case# Founder of America Online
Vint Cerf# Co-developer (with Bob Kahn) of TCP/IP standard (1974)
James Clark# Founder of Silicon Graphics Inc.
# Co-founder (with Marc Andreesson) of Netscape Communications
Larry Ellison# Founder of Oracle, a database company
John Presper Eckert# Co-designer and builder (with Mauchley, et.al.) of ENIAC, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
Philo T. Farnsworth# Inventor of modern television
Jay W. Forrester# Refined magnetic core memory; creator of systems dynamics
Bob Frankston# Co-developer of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program
William Gibson# Coined the phrase "cyberspace" in the novel "Neuromancer" (1984)
Mike Godwin# Early theorist about online legal issues
# Longtime counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Andy Grove# Co-founder and former president of Intel
Johan Helsingius# Started first anonymous e-mail service
William Hewlett# Co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
Reynold B. Johnson# IBM engineer; invented RAMAC disk drives, VCR tape storage and the microphonograph
Bill Joy# Co-founder of Sun Microsystems
Alan Kay# PARC scientist, created Smalltalk software, early contributor to GUI and Object Oriented Programming concepts, laptop computers
Bob Kahn# Co-developer (with Vint Cerf) of TCP/IP standard (1974)
Mitch Kapor# Founder of Lotus Software
# Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Charles F. Kettering# Developed the first electro-mechanical cash register (1906)
Vinod Khosla# Co-founder of Sun Microsystems
John Kilcullen# Founder, publisher of IDG Books
Len Kleinrock# Developed early theory of packet networking in 1961 at MIT, which later led to the Internet
Sandy Lerner# Co-founder of Cisco Systems
Joseph Licklider# First head of computer research at the Defense Department's ARPA research program, which later developed the Internet
# Wrote the influential "Man-Computer Symbiosis" in 1960
John Mauchley # Co-Designer of ENIAC, the first fully operational modern electronic computer (ran from 1945-1955)
Scott McNealy# Co-founder of Sun Microsystems
Bob Metcalfe# Co-inventor of Ethernet
# Founder of 3Com, leading manufacturer of networking equipment
Halsey Minor# Founder of C|NET, online news resource about technology
Gordon Moore# Postulated Moore's Rule (1964), which holds that computing power will double every 18 months with no increase in price
# Co-founder of Intel
Ted Nelson# Coined the word "hypertext" (1965)
Robert Noyce# Co-inventor of the integrated circuit, or computer chip
# Co-founder of Intel
Kenneth Olson # Founder of Digital Electronics Corp. (DEC)
Adam Osborne # Founder of Osborne Computers, maker of the first portable computer
# Prolific and influential writer about computers
William Oughtred # Inventor of the slide rule
David Packard # Co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
John H. Patterson # Founder of National Cash Register, early innovator and manufacturer of adding devices
Alexai Pazhitnov # Wrote "Tetris" in the Soviet Union during Cold War, smuggled it to the outside world where it became a best-seller
George Philbrick # Invento
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
Here's a google cache of it
It's quite a list, here are the names and some of my annotations:
Howard Aiken
Paul Allen (Evil Candidate #1)
Marc Andreesson
John Perry Barlow (EFF co-founder)
Andy Bechtolsheim
John Blankenbaker
Len Bosack
Stewart Brand
Dan Bricklin (of VisiCalc fame)
Larry Brilliant
Steve Case (Evil Candidate #2)
Vint Cerf (who should have already been inducted)
James Clark
Larry Ellison
John Presper Eckert
Philo T. Farnsworth
Jay W. Forrester
Bob Frankston (also of VisiCalc)
William Gibson (what?)
Mike Godwin (also of EFF)
Andy Grove (Intel)
Johan Helsingius
William Hewlett (again, should have already been inducted years ago)
Reynold B. Johnson
Bill Joy
Alan Kay (Smalltalk, PARC)
Bob Kahn (TCP-IP pioneer)
Mitch Kapor (Lotus, EFF)
Charles F. Kettering (!)
Vinod Khosla
John Kilcullen
Len Kleinrock
Sandy Lerner
Joseph Licklider
John Mauchley (ENIAC)
Scott McNealy
Bob Metcalfe (3COM)
Halsey Minor
Gordon Moore (Intel, Moore's rule)
Ted Nelson
Robert Noyce (Intel)
Kenneth Olson
Adam Osborne
William Oughtred (Invented the slide rule!)
David Packard (see Hewlett)
John H. Patterson
Alexai Pazhitnov (Tetris)
George Philbrick
Larry Roberts
Alan Shugart
George Stibitz
Bjarne Stroustrup (C++)
Ken Thompson (UNIX, C)
Jonathan Titus
Ray Tomlinson
Linus Torvalds
Truong Trong Thi
John Von Neumann
Ted Waitt
John Warnock
Thomas J. Watson
Philip R. Zimmerman (PGP)
Konrad Zuse
You can vote for up to 5. There are just too many to really choose well. If Paul Allen or Steve Case get in I'll have to throw a temper tantrum. But there you go...
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As if I were trolling...
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
According to Wikipedia, Farnsworth did invent the TV. It is also in Time magazine. Philo's the TV man, indeed. Perhaps you have him confused with Thomas Crapper, "inventer of the toilet" who really did not invent it. Lookup Farnsworth on snopes: his role in history is so secure that there is not even an urban legend about him.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Jobs is already in (http://www.computerhalloffame.org/) as is Wozniak (http://www.computerhalloffame.org/2000.html), so I guess that's why they aren't being included again.
Some people don't believe that Philo invented the TV since the patent was ownded by RCA, and RCA claimed that they invented it. Philo spent years fighting RCA over the rights. I think he enventually lost. Check out the Wikipedia for more info.
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While Wozniak and Jobs might have been worthy candidates, the fact that they're already in the Computer Hall of Fame (inducted in 2000) probably disqualified them from being nominated again.
See the
Dr. An Wang... of Wang Laboratories
Inventor of magnetic core memory.
Invented first logarithm digitally.
Created first digital machine that multiplied/divided without repetitive adding/subtracting
Created first desktop calculator/computer.
Created first true word processor... and the list goes on and on
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Where is Lady Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer?
She wrote a functional program for a later, base-10 analog version of Babbage's differential engine. The catch was that the device had plans, but was never actually constructed. Years later, when they actually got around to building (or emulating, I'm not sure) the beast, Ada's software ran correctly.
Anyone else care to claim that they could step up to that challenge. Write a program in what would essentially be assembly, for a computer that's never been built, and you're the first one to ever write a program.
Incidentally, she has been honored by having a lesser-used language named after her (Ada, obviously).
what about alan turing? he's one of the founding fathers of computers. i bet he's not there because he was gay.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
As long as you're going to assign value to Moore's Law, which really isn't a law at all, you might as well get it correct. "Moore's Law" is a phrase coined by the press, and it's transistor count that should double every 18 months, not computing power. The two are not necessarily proportional.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
I see Zuse is a current nominee, so I was in error thinking he was omitted.
Gates co-wrote, with three others, a version of BASIC for the Altair 8800 in 1977.
This is just from wikipedia, here
Not trying to slam Gates -- he did help write that version of it. But he didn't invent it.
As for MS "making" computers accessible and inexpensive, IMHO it was IBM, choosing to make the x86 an open architecture, who did that. The OS, back at that time, could have been anything; it would have become the de facto standard until something better/different/more popular had come along.
philcrissman.com.
Actually, Andressen is the only one I was considering voting for. The web browser made the internet something everyone wanted to have and the interface to it seemed to come out of nowhere far after it was techincally achievable.
However, I didn't vote for anyone because I am not knowledgable enough to know how much of the credit Andressen really deserves - and GPLDAN may well be right that he deserves very little - I don't know, but statements like "he's failed at everything else he's ever done" don't lead me to believe GPLDAN is an unbiased observer.
Most all of the achievements on the list were worked on by many people and competing groups simultainously. This leads to complexity in awarding personal credit. First person to get it to work? First to make it work in a user friendly fashion? First to popularize it? Lifetime of good work? I assume this Hall of Fame has some criteria for selection which probably we should all read before voting, but I guess by leaving it unspecified, they are allowing us to determine what the rules should be for such a Hall.
My thought on Mosaic was that since it was technically achievable far earlier, but not implemented so it was revolutionary.
Whereas something like the C programming language is similar to other languages. Perhaps there is an even "better" langauge then C, but C became popular. It was an incremental change which was just big enough of an increment that people jumped onto it.
Certainly C is more widely used then Mosaic, but if C were not invented, people would have used a similar language, whereas if Mosaic were not invented we'd be using Gopher?
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
First off, it's spelt Asimov.
And it was Clarke who put forward the idea that Geostationary orbits would be ideal for satellite communication.
Asimov and Clarke wrote science fiction as a broad genre - space operas, speculative fiction and the like, and was not tied to any science per-se.
And Gibson sure as hell has won quite a lot of accolades, and some of his books have been made into movies, too (Matrix is based on some of his ideas, Johnny Mnemonic is also a book by him).
It's just that in this context, Gibson fits in as one of the very few authors who would deserve to have their names up there.
The only other author I can think of (and no, Stephenson does not count) who could be up there is Ray Kurzweil.
I grabbed the following from Kurzweill Technologies: Ray Kurzweil was the principal developer of