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Top 50 Tech Visionaries
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Turing Award. National Medal of Technology. Presidential Medal of Freedom.Vint Cerfhas one of the most impressive r é sum é s in technology. Cerf's work as an Internet pioneer has largely taken place in universities and government agencies, which in the early 1970s led directly to the creation of ARPANet, the predecessor to today's Internet. Cerf now works for--who else?--Google.
IBM veteranDon Estridgeis widely known as "the father of the PC," at least in its Big Blue incarnation. Estridge developed a number of computer systems, even tinkering with NASA radar equipment. But he is best known for his work as a manager--leading a "skunk works" staff of just 14 people that ultimately produced the IBM PC, an "open" platform that could run third-party software and accept third-party upgrades, that would become the standard for business. Tragically, Estridgedied in a plane crashin 1985 and never saw his creation achieve ubiquity.
The origin story of Dell Computer Corporation is so well-known it has become part of the canon of the tech business.Michael Dellstarted his company, PC's Limited, at age 19 out of his dorm room at the University of Texas. Eventually he dropped out of school to found Dell Computer, which grew at breakneck pace throughout the 1990s. Dell's marketing philosophy turned the industry on its ear: Rather than offer predetermined configurations, Dell's machines were totally customizable and built to order. Eventually almost every competing PC manufacturer followed suit--or went out of business.
Alan Kay (#19) to Grace Murray Hopper (#26)
A jack-of-all-tech-trades,Alan Kaylays claim to at least two watershed innovations, starting with HP's original Dynabook, one of the first usable mobile laptop computers. Kay ideal was to design a laptop that weighed no more than 2 pounds. We still aren't there yet, but Kay's contributions to software--which include shepherding the idea of object-oriented programming and the notion of multiple, overlapping windows in a GUI--rank as essential milestones in computing.
TheMosaic Web browserdevised byMarc Andreessenmay seem quaint now, but bits and pieces of Mosaic code remain standard software components of most of today's commercial browsers. It's a safe bet that many of Andreessen's other creations will leave similar legacies:Netscape, the company he founded, set off the tech stock craze of the 1990s, and hisNing Web site continues to grow in popularity as an outlet where anyone can build a topic-oriented social network. He even finds time toblog regularlyabout all this stuff.
