Information Technology & Some Personalities

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Henry Edward "Ed" Roberts (September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010) - was an American engineer, entrepreneur and medical doctor who designed 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.

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Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922)- was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone.

Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876. In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.

Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society. Bell has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.

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Gary K. Starkweather (born circa 1938) is an American engineer and inventor most notable for the invention of the laser printer and color management.

In 1969, Starkweather invented the laser printer at Xerox's Webster research center. He collaborated on the first fully functional laser printing system at Xerox PARC in 1971.

At Apple Computer in the 1990s, Starkweather invented color management technology, and led the development of Colorsync 1.0. Starkweather joined Microsoft Research in 1997, where he works on display technology.

In 2004, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering.

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Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; as such she is sometimes considered the "World's First Computer Programmer".

She was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron (with Anne Isabella Milbanke). She had no relationship with her father, who died when she was nine. As a young adult she took an interest in mathematics, and in particular Babbage's work on the analytical engine. Between 1842 and 1843 she translated an article by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with a set of notes of her own. These notes contain what is considered the first computer program—that is, an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine. Though Babbage's engine was not built until nearly 150 years later in 1989–91, Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org