Slashdot Mirror
Let's Raise A Glass To The Many Tech Pioneers Who Died In 2016 (slashdot.org)
In technology, you're always "standing on the shoulders" of those who came before you -- and together, each individual's contribution becomes part of a larger ongoing story. So as this year finally winds to a close, click through to see our list of some of the pioneers who left us in 2016. And feel free to share any memories and reflections of your own in the comments.
- David Balme, the lieutenant-commander in Britain's royal Navy during World War II who captured one of the Nazi's Enigma encryption device
- Jane Fawcett, one of the British codebreakers who deciphered a crucial Enigma-encoded message
- Erich Bloch, who helped develop the first IBM mainframe
- Intel CEO (and first hire) Andy Grove
- Ray Tomlinson, considered the inventor of email
- John Ellenby, "godfather of the modern laptop"
- Bill Campbell, the legendary tech executive who passed along his advice to Apple's Steve Jobs, Google's Larry Page, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos
- John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the earth
- Joe Sutter, the lead designer on the 747
- Bob Ebeling, one of five engineers who'd forewarned NASA that the Challenger Space Shuttle could explode at liftoff.
- Vera Rubin, the astronomer who helped confirm the existence of dark matter.
- The 'Radioactive Boy Scout', the ambitious teenager whose efforts to build a breeder reactor turned his parents' home in Michigan into an EPA superfund cleanup site.
- Sound designer Jory K. Prum, who worked on more than 120 video games
- David Bunnell, said to have founded more computer magazines than anyone (including PC Magazine and Macworld)
Surely Marvin Minsky should be present on this list.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?