The Computer History Museum (CHM) is excited to release a new oral history interview with Ken Thompson, one of the world’s foremost programmers and computer scientists. The interview was created in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in connection with Thompson’s selection for the 1983 A. M. Turing Award, the ACM’s highest prize and one of computing’s greatest honors.

Among many other accomplishments in computing, Thompson was the creator of the Unix operating system, and, with Dennis Ritchie, codeveloped the C programming language. A half-century on from these innovations, it is hard to overstate their importance. Unix-like operating systems pervade our digital world. They are the engines for smartphones (iPhones and Androids), laptops, desktops, servers, and supercomputers alike. There are hundreds of Unix-like operating systems using the Linux kernel animating hundreds of millions of personal computers and servers worldwide. Unix-like Linux variants also power all of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The programming language C, also more than a half-century on, remains one of the most widely used programming languages globally.

While at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where Thompson spent most of his career, he earned additional renown for his world championships in computer chess, many using a specialized chess computer he helped to design, and his efforts on the Plan 9 operating system. Later, at Google, Thompson helped create the Go programming language, which has also become one of the top languages in use today.

Thompson at the ACM North American Computer Chess Championship, 1983. https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102645360/

It is hard also to overstate the computing community’s estimation of Thompson as a programmer. Doug McIlroy, himself a famed programmer and Thompson’s manager and collaborator at Bell Labs, recalled recently in an oral history with CHM that Thompson was a “most amazing” programmer: “Ken just had an absolutely beautiful conception of a program … If you read his programming, he doesn’t put in many comments, but you don’t need them. It just reads like a novel … just unbelievable … that clarity just shines through in the original design of Unix.”

For all of his accomplishments, Thompson is an intensely private person, rarely giving interviews, making the insights he provides in his oral history all the more valuable. Early in the oral history, he describes some of his hobbies which he pursued as a youth with unusual intensity as his family moved around the United States and internationally as part of his father’s military career.

Chess has been a life-long interest and pursuit of Thompson’s. In this excerpt, he explains how he first came to the game, and how his engagement with it evolved.

It was in his junior year studying electrical engineering at Berkeley that Thompson first started using computers, and programming quickly became all-consuming for him, in his words “an addiction.” Remarkably, he was quickly hired on to do all sorts of programming work on the campus and had permission to use the University’s computers as he wished late at night, including the main systems in the computing center.

One aspect of Thompson that people may be less familiar with is his sense of whimsy, and his love of practical jokes. An important early episode where colleagues learned this side of his character came just days after he had joined the famed Bell Telephone Laboratories, home to many critical developments in engineering and science. Thompson began raising a baby alligator in his office.

At Bell Labs, Thompson’s first major project was working on Multics, a huge effort to create a highly advanced operating system involving Bell Labs, MIT, and General Electric. After Bell Labs pulled out of the effort in 1969, Thompson began contemplating an operating system of his own, although operating systems research was then very much on the outs at Bell Labs. In this excerpt, he describes how his work developed at the end of 1969 into 1970, resulting in his new Unix operating system.

Ken Thompson (seated) and Dennis Ritchie (standing) with the PDP-11 system at Bell Labs. Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102685442.

Once Thompson had his first Unix operating system, his Bell Labs colleague, Dennis Ritchie, became ever more deeply involved in the effort to create a new programming language for use in further developing Unix, and for generally programming with it. This collaboration between Thompson and Ritchie resulted in the C programming language, which Thompson used to implement Unix for their new PDP-11 computer.

When asked about what has made both Unix and C so enduring, Thompson replied that he believed it was the context of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and its then-environment of largely unconstrained, lavishly funded, curiosity-driven research.

The full oral history with Ken Thompson stretches over four and a half hours and covers many other aspects of his life and career, from computer chess to digital audio, from Google Books to the Go programming language, and much more.

Read the transcript of the oral history.

CHM conducted an earlier oral history interview with Ken Thompson in 2005, focused on the subject of computer chess.

Main Image: Ken Thompson, 2024. Still from ACM-CHM Oral History recording.

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With sadness we say goodbye to remarkable computing pioneer and 2018 CHM Fellow Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley.

Shirley, who passed away on August 9, 2025, at the age of 91, was born Vera Stephanie Buchthal in Dortmund, Germany, in 1933. She arrived in Britain as an unaccompanied child refugee on the Kindertransport, an effort by Jewish and Quaker organizations in response to the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, which highlighted the escalating danger faced by Jews in Nazi Germany and Austria. (Some 10,000 unaccompanied children from Nazi-controlled territories were given refuge in Great Britain between 1938 and 1940). This experience profoundly shaped the young Vera, who, throughout her life would tell others that her motivation to try hard and dream big was because, “I wanted my life to have been worth saving.”

Vera Buchtal, or Stephanie Shirley, ca. 1940. Courtesy of Dame Stephanie Shirley.

On arriving in her new land, Vera settled in with foster parents in Little Aston in the Midlands. At Oswestry Girls’ High School, where mathematics was not offered to girls, she secured permission to study it at the neighboring boys’ school—an early sign of her determination to overcome discrimination, although one she would have to adapt to soon in the business world. Finding that her business letters were not being responded to, she began signing her name “Steve” (instead of Stephanie) and immediately got a much improved response.

In the 1950s, after graduating high school, Shirley worked at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, where World War II code-breaking machines had been built. Taking evening classes for six years, she obtained an honors degree in mathematics and married physicist Derek Shirley in 1962.

A true tech pioneer decades ahead of her time, with essentially just pocket change, “Steve” founded Freelance Programmers in 1962, later known as F International. In this era, when society often relegated women to the domestic sphere, she created a thriving, multi-million-dollar software business by employing mostly women and embracing remote, flexible work. She reimagined what the future of work could look like decades ahead of its time and gave vastly improved opportunities for women seeking to balance careers and home. Freelance Programmers (later Xansa) grew to 8,500 staff and a value of nearly $3 billion.

Shirley in front of ERNIE, together with the designer, Harry Fensom, ca. 1957. Courtesy of Dame Stephanie Shirley.

As Oxford professor and friend Sue Black remarks, “Her career began on some of the earliest British computers, including ERNIE, the Premium Bonds lottery computer. She didn’t just open doors for women in tech, she built the doors and handed out the keys.” ERNIE stands for the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment and was a hardware random number generator created to find winners each month for the premium bond prize draw. The first ERNIE was built in 1956 by the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill by some of the same team of engineers who built Colossus, the famous WW II codebreaking computer. This was an important part of Shirley’s post-graduate work at the Research Station.

Through the Shirley Foundation, Dame Stephanie Shirley gave away most of her personal fortune to causes including autism research, the arts, and computing heritage.

Learn more

2018 CHM Fellow Dame Stephanie Shirley blog.

Main image: Dame Stephanie Shirley. Courtesy of Dame Stephanie Shirley.

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He was wise, practical, and kind. For historians of IT, he is a huge loss because he would decide a topic needed attention and corral experts to write simultaneously about it in special issues of Annals. That effort always put a relevant topic on our intellectual map.

— James Cortada, Historian

Burton Grad, a pioneering figure in the evolution of software and a devoted family man, passed away peacefully at his home in Westport, Connecticut, on June 3, 2025, at the age of 97. His remarkable life encompassed transformative contributions to the software industry and unwavering dedication to family, community, and historical preservation. Burt was a dynamo, who, working for decades with CHM, shared his passion for the history of software with the world.

A Remarkable Career

Burt began his groundbreaking career in 1954 at General Electric, where he was among the original programmers for the first American commercial computer, the Univac I. His work on the first production and inventory control software laid the earliest foundations of his career, a starting point right at the beginning of the computer age that provided him with insights into the critical role software would come to play across industry and society in years to come.

During the 1960s, Burt’s influence deepened at IBM. He contributed significantly to both scientific and application programming and was a central figure on the 1969 Unbundling Task Force, a landmark moment that transformed software into a standalone industry. He also initially oversaw IBM’s CICS (Customer Information Control System), an enduring transaction processing system still used worldwide.

In 1978, Burt founded his own consulting firm, continuing to shape the software landscape through strategic planning and valuation work for emerging software and services companies. His leadership extended beyond corporate halls into industry organizations such as ADAPSO (later ITAA), where he served as a guiding force from the early 1970s.

Recognizing the importance of preserving software history, Burt cofounded the Software History Center in 2000 with friend and colleague Luanne Johnson. Their shared vision was to safeguard the stories and records of an industry that had so rapidly transformed the world. This initiative later merged with the CHM, forming the foundation of what is now the Software Industry Special Interest Group (SIG). As the SIG’s mission statement describes, they sought to correct the historical misperception that “pure software companies didn’t exist prior to Microsoft.” Through determined effort, Burt and Luanne ensured that the contributions of early software pioneers would not fade into obscurity.

An Active Life

Even in his later years, Burt’s passion never waned. Until his passing, he actively edited articles for the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing on the early software foundations of the CAD/CAM industry. In “late retirement,” he served as CFO for American Business, a firm led by his son Alan, embodying a playful professional rivalry over who truly held the reins.

As colleague and computing historian Thomas Haigh recounts, Burt had a rare gift for gathering historians and pioneers to illuminate overlooked corners of computing history. Whether at events on desktop publishing, expert systems, or spreadsheets, Burt’s insightful (and sometimes stubborn) questions helped shape scholarship and sparked enduring conversations. Haigh remembers that Burt’s curiosity bridged technical and historical divides, offering perspectives that scholars still value today.

Jeffrey Yost, director of the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI), recalls Burt’s remarkable talent for uniting historians and practitioners through workshops that yielded over a hundred oral histories and crucial archival donations to CHM and CBI. Yost describes Burt as a force of nature: tirelessly dedicated, endlessly personable, and always armed with a wry sense of humor.

CHM Legacy

Burt’s curatorial legacy includes his own extensive papers (now at CHM), along with significant contributions to the museum’s collection from colleagues and industry leaders. Thanks to his advocacy, key corporate and personal archives—including documents from Tymshare, GEIS, Informatics, and other seminal software firms—found a permanent home, preserving the field’s collective memory for future generations.

Why is it important? “Why is the history of the Gold Rush important?” Grad would counter. “This is an incredible industry. It has impacted nearly everyone’s life. Except for a couple of people, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, it wasn’t being captured.” Burt recorded 130 oral histories—each lasting 2 to 6 hours—for CHM, a remarkable achievement!

In his lifelong commitment to documenting and honoring software’s pioneers, Burt Grad built not just programs and business plans, but a living record of an entire industry’s birth and growth. His work ensured that the story of software would be told with nuance, rigor, and humanity.

Burt will be remembered not only as a pioneer of computing and a champion of software history, but as a vibrant, deeply engaged human being who touched countless lives—on the tennis court, in the boardroom, and at the family table. A devoted baseball fan and avid New York Times crossword puzzler, Burt also delighted in detective novels, history, and political biographies. His quick wit, love of puns, and fondness for chocolate ice cream will long be cherished by those who knew him.

Thank you, Burt, for your energy, passion, humor, and kindness.

Learn More

Guide to the Burton Grad Papers: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726886/

Oral History of Burton Grad: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726886/ and https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10274673

Thanks to CHM Vice President and Chief Curatorial and Exhibitions Officer Kirsten Tashev for her contributions to this tribute. Burt asked that anyone who wishes to honor him consider a donation to CHM, which you can do here or by writing membership@computerhistory.org.

Main image: Burt Grad on his 85th Birthday. Photo courtesy of Carol Anne Ances.

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My philosophy is ‘I’m for the entrepreneur.’

— Dick Kramlich, CHM Oral History, 2015

Throughout his long career, Dick Kramlich was celebrated as a trailblazer of venture investing in Silicon Valley, the United States, and beyond. Many of the firms he backed became billion-dollar concerns, and he enjoyed an untarnished reputation as direct and trustworthy, a “gentleman.”

This acclaim is richly deserved, but it is not the whole story. Fundamentally, Dick Kramlich thought of himself as an entrepreneur, and he viewed his successful career within that frame. In his oral history interviews with me for CHM, he made this crystal clear: “I regard myself as, first and foremost, an entrepreneur.” I believe this is the key to understanding his professional achievements.

Entrepreneurial Roots

In interviews with the Museum, Kramlich explained that he came from a family of entrepreneurs. His grandfather had cofounded the Safeway grocery chain, and his father had started a line of groceries that were acquired by Kroger in the mid-1950s. As a teen, Kramlich began to follow their example, using his savings to buy “half a train car of light bulbs” directly from a manufacturer, and reselling them for a profit. He found the experience thrilling, “…once you get it in your DNA, everything else is boring.”

The young bulb magnate eventually made his way to Harvard Business School, following an undergraduate degree in history. By the mid 1960s, several of Kramlich’s friends had gone to work with the leading venture investment firms of the day, like Venrock and American Research and Development. He thought their work sounded exciting: identifying promising entrepreneurs, investing in them, and helping them succeed. Kramlich joined an established investment firm in Boston and was soon scouring for new opportunities up and down the Route 128 corridor, then in its full technological bloom. He found the excitement he was searching for in the entrepreneurial growth around new technologies.

Massachusetts’ legendary Route 128 corridor. 1981-11. From https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/335/1899. © Technical Publishing Co.

A New Coast

In 1968, an even more thrilling prospect dawned in Kramlich’s imagination. He read an interview with Arthur Rock who was gaining fame for his venture investments on the San Francisco Peninsula, an essential ingredient for why the region would soon become known as “Silicon Valley, USA.” Rock had been crucial to the formation of many of the key companies manufacturing the silicon integrated circuits that were transforming the world of computing, and electronics more broadly.

Rock’s venture partnership with Tommy Davis was ending, and in the article in Kramlich’s hands, Rock announced he was going to “…find a younger partner and do it all over again.” Struck by the possibilities, Kramlich dashed off a handwritten letter to Rock, with the intention of becoming that younger partner. Impressed, Rock began meeting with Kramlich, and in 1969, Kramlich moved to San Francisco and into his new venture partnership with Rock. The pair quickly raised $10 million from successful technologist-entrepreneurs, including several of the cofounders of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel.

Arthur Rock, 1997, © Louis Fabian Bachrach

In 1977, as the partnership between Rock and Kramlich wound down, Kramlich was immersed in the rising personal computer industry, attending tradeshows and other gatherings and taking meetings with entrepreneurs. Early on, he set his sights on Apple. It, and its founders, had what he often called “religion,” a genuine and abiding passion for what they were doing, a true sense of mission: “I mean, there were two companies—one out of Berkeley and one out of Palo Alto at Stanford—they were better companies… technically in my judgement, but they didn’t have that something… the entrepreneurial spark, whereas Apple had it.” Through an old friend, Kramlich and Rock were able to make personal investments in Apple’s first round of outside financing.

A page from Apple’s “Preliminary Confidential Offering.” 1978–1982. Mike Markkula collection of early Apple Computer material. CHM catalog number 102783503. Gift of Mike Markkula.

At the same time, Kramlich was restless, exploring options for his next move. Where could he maximize his entrepreneurial excitement? He had serious conversations about joining Kleiner Perkins, a venture firm founded by successful technologist-entrepreneurs looking to support the next generations thereof in Silicon Valley. He was also weighing an open invitation to pursue venture investing at the investment bank Hambrecht and Quist in San Francisco. These were firms with the finest of reputations, and that meant they were well established.

Entrepreneurial Investing

Through connections in the investing world, Kramlich began talking to Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal, two ambitious investors who wanted to establish a venture partnership of their own. They were entrepreneurial, intending to operate nationally (and eventually internationally) rather than regionally, and to support firms at different stages of development. They were also interested in building a partnership for the long term. Newhall and Bonsal would operate from the East Coast, and they wanted Kramlich to capture the opportunities in Silicon Valley. Kramlich responded to the lure of creating something new, and to the experience, ambition, and character of Newhall and Bonsal. They shook hands, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) was launched.

Cofounders of NEA, from left to right: Chuck Newhall, Dick Kramlich, Frank Bonsal. June 1978. Chuck Newhall Papers. CHM catalog number 102644082. Gift of Charles W. Newhall.

A document from the early days of NEA, detailing their overall approach for potential investors. ca. 1978. Chuck Newhall Papers. CHM catalog number 102644082. Gift of Charles W. Newhall.

One of the early pitch documents used by NEA’s cofounders for raising their first fund. ca. 1978. Chuck Newhall Papers. CHM catalog number 102644082. Gift of Charles W. Newhall.

Investing in Forethought

In the following decades, NEA continually grew, raising larger and larger funds, and delivering high returns for its investors. Kramlich was equally if not more excited to have helped entrepreneurs create successful and meaningful firms, delivering on their “religion.” Some of the most recognizable firms with which he was involved include 3Com, Silicon Graphics, Immunex, Macromedia, and Juniper. But there is another much less well-known firm that illustrates so well what Kramlich meant when he said, “My philosophy is ‘I’m for the entrepreneur.’” It was named Forethought.

Forethought was a startup in personal computing software, created by two entrepreneurs who left Apple in 1982. Their ambition was to bring the power of the graphical user interface as developed at the fabled Xerox Palo Alto Research Center to the world of the IBM PC and its clones. Think Windows before Windows, but much more. Forethought’s software, called Foundation, was to be “an everything app,” an operating system with every application folded intrinsically into it. Relational databases, documents, drawings, spreadsheets, Foundation would do it all. In 1983, NEA, led by Kramlich, made a first investment in the company.

Like the majority of venture capital backed startups, Forethought soon ran into serious problems. Foundation was not going to work. It was too ambitious for the state of the underlying hardware technology, and Oracle was not going to deliver a promised database system that would have been a key part of Foundation. Kramlich helped guide the firm into a pivot, recruiting Bob Metcalfe – the technologist-entrepreneur and Ethernet inventor behind 3Com—to Forethought’s board. To bring in much needed revenue, Forethought began distributing and marketing a small database program for the Macintosh, developed by a small firm in Massachusetts, called Filemaker.

The firm hired a new developer, Robert Gaskins, who assembled a small team to make a new product: Presenter. Gaskins was impassioned about the possibility to use What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) graphical software, graphical user interfaces, and laser printers to allow knowledge workers of all stripes to create their own overhead presentations, handouts, and slides. Presenter would put the power of graphical personal computing in the hands of these knowledge workers, allowing them to better and more efficiently create vital communication aids. But while Gaskins and his team were developing Presenter, the numbers for Forethought were not adding up. The firm needed another round of investment.

A page from a very early memo by Robert Gaskins about what would become PowerPoint. August 15, 1984. Dennis Austin PowerPoint Records. CHM catalog number 102733911. Gift of Dennis Austin.

NEA had already put two rounds of funding into Forethought, and now was being asked for a third. Despite Gaskins’, and now Kramlich’s, enthusiasm for the potential of Presenter, NEA decided against the third round. Even Metcalfe agreed, reminding Kramlich, “Dick, you know, there’s a time and a place to give up on these things.” Kramlich’s reply? “I don’t disagree with you, Bob, but now is not the time.” Instead, Kramlich approached his partners with a unique offer. He proposed to personally finance Forethought himself, and “If it’s a winner, you guys get the proceeds. If it’s a loser, I’ll take it.” Chuck Newhall responded, “How can I turn that down?” Kramlich replied, “That’s my point.”

Over the next four months, Kramlich fed Forethought $60 thousand a month to cover payroll and costs, for a total of about $250 thousand. With his wife, Pam, they put several domestic plans and priorities on hold to manage this direct investment. The Kramlichs were putting Dick’s philosophy into practice, investing in Gaskins, his team, and his vision and passion for Presenter. As Kramlich later explained, “But if some guy at a desk, in the back of the place… has kept this place alive and you’re lucky enough to find that person… I’ll walk the plank for them.”

Kramlich’s trust quickly paid off. Apple was enamored of Filemaker and made a big investment in Forethought. There was no more need for Dick’s monthly check. And in 1987, Presenter finally came to the market under its new name: PowerPoint 1.0. Originally for the Macintosh, PowerPoint was a smash success, with Forethought booking millions of dollars of orders. Things accelerated quickly. Three months later, Microsoft purchased Forethought to get PowerPoint, its first acquisition. When Kramlich went to talk about returning his gains on the deal to his partners in NEA, Newhall cut him off, “Dick, you earned that. You ought to get it.” As Kramlich later explained, “That’s the way our partnership has always worked. That’s why it’s enduring. Because we do the right thing, we’ll do the fair thing. And we can be candid with each other.”

PowerPoint packaging. Microsoft Corporation, 1994. Jim Warren collection. CHM catalog number 102690902. Gift of Jim Warren.

A Legacy

Over the past decade, Dick and Pam Kramlich developed a strong connection with CHM. They provided significant support for the creation of the Museum’s exhibit Make Software: Change the World! With their Kramlich Art Foundation, Museum staff have benefitted from discussions and events at the intersection of media art, computer history, conservation, and presentation. Dick Kramlich participated in a four-part oral history for the Museum and always encouraged our work to preserve and interpret business history around venture investing.

Dick Kramlich’s passing is a blow for many individuals and communities, including the Museum’s. But our sympathies are greatest for Pam and the rest of their family, for whom his loss is immeasurable.

Pam and Dick Kramlich in 2019. Photo by Ryan Young.

Learn More

View and read Dick Kramlich’s four-part CHM oral history:

Part 1: Video, Transcript

Part 2: Video, Transcript

Part 3: Video, Transcript

Part 4: Video, Transcript

See an earlier oral history, part of a series from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) now preserved at CHM, here.

Watch Dick Kramlich’s appearances at CHM:

Trailblazers of Venture Capital (2019)

Venture Capital in the Valley: Past, Present & Future (2011)

View and read oral histories of Dick Kramlich’s NEA cofounders:

Charles Newhall: CHM Video, Transcript; NVCA Transcript

Frank Bonsal: CHM Video, Transcript; NVCA Transcript

The post Dick Kramlich, 1935–2025: An Appreciation appeared first on CHM.

With sadness, we say goodbye to computer pioneer and 2022 CHM Fellow Donald L. Bitzer.

Don Bitzer. Credit: National Inventors Hall of Fame

Bitzer was born January 1, 1934, and was an American electrical engineer and computer scientist. He was co-inventor of the flat-panel plasma display and the “father of PLATO,” the world’s earliest time-shared, computer-based education system and home to one of the world’s most pioneering online communities.

Bitzer studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), obtaining a PhD in 1960. Following graduation, he joined the UIUC faculty, where he learned of efforts to bring lessons to students over a closed-circuit television network. While a committee of engineers, psychologists, and educators were unable to agree on a single solution at the time, Bitzer wrote up a proposal within a week, got it approved, and immediately started developing his PLATO system for the university’s groundbreaking ILLIAC I computer—the first electronic digital stored program computer built by a university. (PLATO stands for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations).

University of Illinois ILLIAC I computer, ca. 1952. Credit: University of Illinois

To expand multimedia for courses, later PLATO terminals incorporated microfilm projector that could combine detailed images with computer text on the screen, and some used an attached magnetic audio disk for language and music instruction. To make things easier on the eyes for students sitting in front of computer terminals for many hours at a time, in 1964 Bitzer, with colleague Gene Slottow and graduate student Robert Wilson, invented the flat panel display: plasma screens do not flicker and their clever design also saved memory in the computer by having the display itself store data.

By the early 1980s, PLATO supported thousands of student terminals worldwide, running on multiple different mainframe computers. Many modern concepts in multi-user computing were developed for or matured under PLATO, including forums, message boards, online testing, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, multimedia, and multiplayer video games.

University of Illinois chemistry students using PLATO terminals, ca. 1975. Credit: Dr Stanley Smith.

In 1989, Bitzer left Illinois to join the faculty of North Carolina State University, where he was most recently Distinguished University Research Professor of Computer Science. Bitzer was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, an IEEE Fellow, and a 2002 Emmy Award winner for his co-invention of the flat-panel plasma display.

Bitzer, with the flat-panel display which he co-invented in 1964 with colleague Gene Slottow and graduate student Robert Wilson.

When networks like the internet were still a research lab curiosity, Don Bitzer’s multiuser PLATO system served as a dress rehearsal for what we do on those networks today—learn, teach, collaborate, chat, mail, play games, argue, and more. PLATO’s courseware language and touchscreen, multimedia terminals previewed features of decades hence. Bitzer’s PLATO system was a postcard from the future of online communities, and its example would help make that future real. 

Bitzer at PLATO terminal. Credit: University of Illinois Archives, ID 0003303

Learn More

Dear, Brian, The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture, Pantheon, 2017.

Kaiser, Cameron, “PLATO: How an educational computer system from the ’60s shaped the future,” Arstechnica, https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/plato-how-an-educational-computer-system-from-the-60s-shaped-the-future/

PLATO @50: A Culture of Innovation, Six-Part Series, Computer History Museum, June 3, 2010. 

Oral History of Don Bitzer, Computer History Museum, July 27, 2022.

Computer History Museum PLATO objects.

The post In Memoriam: Donald Bitzer, 1934–2024 appeared first on CHM.

With deep sadness, we say goodbye to computer pioneer Thomas Kurtz.

Thomas Eugene Kurtz (Feb. 22 1928–Nov. 12, 2024) was an American mathematician, computer scientist and co-inventor, with John Kemeny, of the BASIC programming language and Dartmouth Timesharing System.

In the early days of academic computing in the 1960s, there were no simple non-professional programming languages available for undergraduates. BASIC was aimed at this audience. To realize their vision, Kurtz and Kemeny concurrently developed the Dartmouth Timesharing System, allowing BASIC to be accessed by students around campus using Teletype terminals.

Finding a Calling

Born in Oak Park Illinois, Kurtz graduated from Knox College in 1950, and received his PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 1956. In 1951, Kurtz was fortunate in obtaining rare experience on a computer—the pioneering SWAC machine created by the National Bureau of Standards and housed at UCLA. SWAC, the Standards Western Automatic Computer, was among the earliest electronic computers in the United States and was supervised by legendary computer pioneer and 2013 CHM Fellow Harry Huskey.

Kurtz began teaching at Dartmouth upon receiving his PhD. After a few years, he and fellow professor John Kemeny developed the original version of the Dartmouth Timesharing System (DTSS), a method of sharing computer access across a network and a requirement for allowing multiple students access to BASIC.

John Kemeny (left) and Thomas Kurtz (right), ca. 1964. Courtesy of the Darmouth College Library

DTSS was the earliest successful, large-scale timesharing system, a remarkable achievement. General Electric, which had donated computers to Dartmouth, extended DTSS into the kernel of their online services, such as Genie. DTSS was unveiled on May 1, 1964, along with BASIC. By that fall, hundreds of students were exploring BASIC on the 20 terminals around campus.

General Electric GE-225 mainframe computer, home to the Dartmouth Timesharing System, ca. 1967. Courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library

Making an Impact

Since its inception, the BASIC language has flourished across multiple generations of computers—from mainframes and minicomputers in the 1960s, to microcomputers in the 1970s and ‘80s to the credit-card sized Raspberry Pi computer of today. In 1978, Harvard students Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote their first version of BASIC for a new hobbyist-oriented microcomputer, the MITS Altair 8800. Their version of BASIC turned the Altair from a blinking box with few capabilities into a useful computer, and BASIC’s popularity skyrocketed again during the personal computer era.

A Storied Career

From 1966 to 1975, Kurtz served as the director of the Kiewit Computation Center at Dartmouth and as director of the Office of Academic Computing from 1975 to 1978. In 1979, he and Stephen J. Garland organized a professional master’s program in Computer and Information Systems, funded in part with a grant from IBM.

In 1983, Kurtz joined Kemeny and three former Dartmouth students in forming True BASIC, Inc., whose purpose was to develop quality educational software and a platform-independent BASIC compiler. Upon termination of the CIS program in 1988, Kurtz returned to teaching and retired from Dartmouth in 1993.

Kurtz served as council chairman and trustee of EDUCOM and on the so-called Pierce Panel of the President’s Advisory Committee. He also served on the steering committee for two NSF- and ARPA-supported activities and was the chair of the first CCUC conference on instructional computing. He helped form American National Standards committee X3J2, which developed the ANSI standard for BASIC, serving as chair from 1974 to 1985. Kurtz was a member of the ISO committee SC22/WG8, concerned with the international standard for BASIC, and served as its convener from 1987 to 1993. In 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM.

Learn More

2023 Fellow Award Ceremony

The development of the Dartmouth time-sharing system video.

Thomas Kurtz’s granddaughters shares his thoughts on developing the time-sharing system in this video.

The post In Memoriam: Thomas E. Kurtz, 1928–2024 appeared first on CHM.

From her childhood, Lillian Schwartz was a ceaseless artist. Indeed, she began her oral history interview with the Computer History Museum with early childhood memories of drawing: drawing with sticks in dirt, and with chalk on sidewalks. When I visited her in August 2021 at her apartment in New York City in connection with her selection as a Fellow of the Museum, she was again drawing, inking fresh work that another artist friend was eager to animate using computers in a collaboration.

Matthew Cavenaugh Photography.

Between these points of first experimentation with drawing, and her continued practice of it for nearly nine decades, Schwartz enjoyed a life in art characterized by continual change and exploration. Her early embrace of the digital computer, and its capacities for generating and manipulating images, as an artist’s tool was key, in her estimation, to this continual unfolding of inspiration and possibility. Schwartz’s accomplishments in creating very early computer animations and incorporating them into a series of astonishing art films in the 1970s, made her what—as noted in Schwartz’s New York Times obituary—historian and art critic Hannah Stamler called “a pioneer of the form” of “digital imagery” itself.

Schwartz pursued the many twists and turns of the digital computer, with all of its dramatic and rapid evolutions, as her artist’s tool through a long association with the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. There, as a resident visitor and, later, a paid consultant, from the close of the 1960s to 2002, she enjoyed the use of their computing facilities and collaboration with many and diverse researchers. In 2021, Lillian Schwartz was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in recognition of her trailblazing efforts at the intersection of computers and art.

Born in 1927 as the youngest of 13 children, Lillian Schwartz overcame economic hardship and bigotry, creating art however she could. She sculpted with bread dough, colored on walls, and, as mentioned above, drew in the dirt with a stick. Schwartz burst into the New York artworld in 1968 with the appearance of her multimedia, interactive sculpture “Proxima Centauri” in the now famous Museum of Modern Art exhibition, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age. Immediately afterward, she began a decades-long residency at Bell Labs the legendary research and development center. During her long and prolific career, Schwartz created a remarkable series of art films incorporating the emergent technology of computer animation, and often scored with fresh developments in computer music. Her work has been exhibited by MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney, and many other museums, and her archive is now preserved at The Henry Ford.

The Computer History Museum offers a wide range of in-depth and engaging online resources about Lillian Schwartz and her art. Some of them are presented below, as an invitation to experience more of this remarkable person and her body of work.

Learn More

Lillian Schwartz: Pushing the Medium is an extended essay on Schwartz’s life and career and includes excerpts from her breakthrough computer films. https://computerhistory.org/blog/lillian-schwartz-pushing-the-medium/

CHM exhibition resources featuring the work of Lillian Schwartz

Technology + Art. A companion essay to the 2022 exhibit at the Computer History Museum of early computer films, 1963-1972, including selections from the work of Lillian Schwartz. https://computerhistory.org/blog/technology-and-art/

A gallery of short excerpts from the films featured in Technology + Art, including several films by Schwartz. https://computerhistory.org/playlists/technology-art/

A companion essay for the 2022 exhibit at the Computer History Museum, Music-Film-Computers. This exhibit featured editions of Lillian Schwartz’s breakthrough computer films of the early 1970s with scores by F. Richard Moore, an early computer music researcher then at Bell Labs. https://computerhistory.org/blog/music-film-computers/

The post In Memoriam: Lillian Schwartz, 1927–2024 appeared first on CHM.

Dad knew he was destined to start a company of his own. He got no greater pleasure than developing products and commercializing them. It was common for him to fly and see customers all over the world. He loved to be close to the client base.

— Raj Kapany

Narinder Singh Kapany (1926–2020) was an Indian American physicist whose work in the mid to late 1950s, along with that of others, laid the foundations for a global telecommunications revolution and the modern internet era.

These early pioneers showed that it was possible to send optical signals along tiny glass fibers. Over the decades, this fundamental discovery has been developed into our current worldwide network of undersea fiber optic cables crisscrossing the oceans in a giant web. “People think that data is in the cloud, but it’s not,” said Jayne Stowell, who oversees construction of Google’s undersea cable projects. “It’s in the ocean.”

Source: https://medium.com/algorithm-and-datastructure/critical-connections-in-a-network-901a6165c068

Through improvements in the fiber itself, as well as in methods of transmitting light information, a single glass fiber the thickness of a human hair can now transmit 32 TB/s. That’s 32 trillion bytes of information—or about 6,800 DVDs worth of information—every second. Kapany coined the term “fiber optics” in a 1960 Scientific American article, and he wrote the first textbook for the field and was its most public spokesman. His success was undoubtedly influenced by the support and partnership of his wife, Satinder Kaur Kapany. The challenges of pioneering new technology and establishing himself in the scientific community required immense perseverance and resilience, which were bolstered by her steadfast encouragement.

Early Life and Education

Narinder Singh Kapany was born on October 31, 1926, in Moga, a small town in Punjab, India. His early life in pre-independence India was marked by natural curiosity and a passion for learning about the world around him. After completing his initial education at Agra University, in 1952 Kapany pursued higher studies in optics, which led him to Imperial College, London and to his future wife. Here, under the mentorship of British optics pioneer Harold Hopkins, he embarked on a journey that would change the world.

Narinder Kapany at Dehradun, India, at the foothills of the Himalayas, where he did his early schooling.

The Birth of Fiber Optics

While working on his PhD at Imperial College under Hopkins in the early 1950s, Kapany conducted groundbreaking research on light transmission through fibers. At a time when the scientific community believed that light could not travel through bent structures, Kapany’s experiments demonstrated otherwise: in 1953, he successfully transmitted light through bent glass fibers, proving that optical signals could indeed be guided along a curved path.

This breakthrough paved the way for the development of fiber optics, a technology that relies on the principle of total internal reflection to transmit light over long distances with minimal loss. Kapany’s work laid the theoretical and practical groundwork for this technology, which would later become crucial for modern communication systems and most importantly the global data communications network knows as the internet.

Kapany determined that Total Internal Reflection was the key to long distance optical transmission of light. Source: https://www.coherent.com/news/glossary/optical-fibers

Professional Journey and Innovations

After completing his doctorate in 1955, the Kapanys moved to the United States, where Narinder continued his research and innovation and where he and Satinder had a son, Raj, and a few years later, a daughter, Kiki.

Coming to America: Kapany on his way to New York, 1955.

In 1960, Kapany founded Optics Technology, Inc. (OTI), in California, one of the first companies to commercialize fiber optic products. OTI made lenses, coatings and endoscopes for industrial and military markets and took the company public in 1967. Some of Silicon Valley’s very first and ultimately most influential venture capitalists provided early funding for OTI, including William Draper, Irwin Fetterman, and Tom Perkins.

Early Optics Technology advertisement.

Kapany adopted an American accent, retaining just enough of his Indian and English tenor to make him stand out—an aptitude for code-switching that contributed to his success in both the science lab and the boardroom, according to his son Raj.

In 1977, Kapany started a new company, Kaptron, to specialize in ways of improving long distance fiber optic transmission for telephone and internet companies such as AT&T, Northern Telecom, and British Telecom. Kaptron was sold to connector giant AMP, and Kapany was made head of their 100-person R&D department, where he stayed for 10 years developing advanced photolithography materials and components.

Kapany’s contributions extended beyond fiber optics. He held over 100 patents in various fields, including biomedical instrumentation, solar energy, and pollution monitoring. His innovations have had far-reaching impacts, influencing diverse sectors from telecommunications to medical diagnostics. Some of his inventions and products he improved upon include oximeters, laser coagulators, and endoscopes.

Throughout his career, his wife, Satinder Kapany, provided him with unwavering emotional and moral support. The challenges of pioneering new technology and establishing himself in the scientific community required immense perseverance and resilience, which were bolstered by her steadfast encouragement.

Satinder and Narinder Kapany at an optics conference in Florence, 1954.

Academic Contributions and Legacy

Kapany was also a dedicated educator and evangelist for fiber optics. While he did not win the Nobel Prize for the invention of fiber optics, he was its most public face, speaking and writing widely on the topic.

Kapany’s career, which blended business, academia and scientific research, included professorships at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He endowed university chairs at both those universities as well as University of California, Irvine and Santa Barbara. His teaching, research, and generous funding support for students and departments, inspired a generation of scholars, scientists and engineers, many of whom have made significant contributions to the field of optics.

Narinder in his research lab at Imperial College.

Philanthropy and Recognition

The Kapanys were committed philanthropists and cultural ambassadors. They founded the Sikh Foundation in 1967, aimed at promoting the rich heritage and culture of Sikhism. Through this foundation, they supported various educational and cultural initiatives, including scholarships, exhibitions, and publications. The Kapanys also played a crucial role in establishing the Sikh art collection at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Their efforts ensured that the art and history of the Sikh community received recognition and appreciation on a global scale.

Despite his important contributions, Narinder Kapany did not always receive the recognition he deserved. However, over the years, his work has been acknowledged by various prestigious institutions. He was named one of seven “Unsung Heroes” by Fortune magazine in their “Businessmen of the Century” issue in 1999. He was also honored with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the Government of India in 2004, recognizing his outstanding contributions to science and technology.

Impact

Narinder Singh Kapany’s life demonstrates the power of ideas, of invention, faith, and perseverance. His pioneering work in fiber optics transformed the way the world exchanges information and established the basic principles and technical foundation for the undersea cable network of fiber optic cables that form today’s Internet. Narinder Kapany may be an unsung hero, a “hidden figure,” but his impact on the world is enduring. He passed away on December 4, 2020 at the age of 94.

Explore More

Kapany, Narinder, The Man Who Bent Light: Father of Fiber Optics, Roli Books, New Delhi, 2022. Amazon.

Hopkins, H., Kapany, N. A Flexible Fibrescope, using Static Scanning. Nature 173, 39–41 (1954). https://doi.org/10.1038/173039b0

Kapany, N. High-Resolution Fibre Optics Using Sub-Micron Multiple Fibres. Nature 184, 881–883 (1959). https://doi.org/10.1038/184881a0

Kapany, N. Optical Image Assessment. Nature 188, 1083–1086 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1038/1881083a0

Capellaro, D., Kapany, N. & Long, C. A Hypodermic Probe using Fibre Optics. Nature 191, 927–928 (1961). https://doi.org/10.1038/191927a0

Kapany, N., Peppers, N., Zwing, H. et al. Retinal Photocoagulation by Lasers. Nature 199, 146–149 (1963). https://doi.org/10.1038/199146a0

Kapany, Narinder, “Fiber Optics,” Scientific American, November, 1960.

Kapany, N.S., Light Transmitters: Fiber Optics. Principles and Applications, Academic Press, New York, 1967.

The Sikh Foundation, 580 College Ave, Palo Alto, Calif 94303.

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