Antoni Kilinski

A noted contributor to computer science in Poland, Kilinski played a pioneering role in the development of electronic computing and digital technology. In 1948 Antoni worked in the central institutions of the Polish...

Myron Kayton

Designer and analyzer of some of the earliest multi-sensor navigation systems, Kayton has spent much of his career working for TRW, NASA, and Litton, followed by running his own practice for 18...

Gordon Kidd Teal

Developer of the first silicon transistor, Teal transformed the semiconductor industry. Born in South Dallas, Texas, he was Valedictorian at the Bryan Street High School in Dallas, Texas. He earned his undergraduate...

Herman Hollerith

Inventor of the punched card, Hollerith was a German-American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. He was the...

Niels Ivar Bech

Leader of the group that formed Regnecentralen, the first Danish computer company, Bech shaped the course of Danish computing history. He led a group that started as an advisory board formed by...

Eiichi Goto

Inventor of the parametron computer, Goto made foundational contributions to early computing in Japan. In 1954, when he was a graduate student of Professor Takahasi's Laboratory, Goto invented a majority logic element, the...

Julius Blank

Co-developer of an inexpensive method for manufacturing silicon chips, building them from scratch beginning with the machinery for growing silicon crystals, Blank was a semiconductor pioneer and a member of the so-called...

Gerald Estrin

Father of reconfigurable computing and variable structure computing, Estrin transformed how computational processes could be accelerated using variable configurations of specialized hardware modules. Estrin received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the...

William (Danny) Daniel Hillis

Co-founder of Thinking Machines Corporation, Hillis developed the Connection Machine, a parallel supercomputer he designed at MIT. He also co-founded the Long Now Foundation, Applied Minds, and Metaweb, and authored The Pattern...

Morgan Sparks

Co-inventor of the microwatt bipolar junction transistor, Sparks helped create a semiconductor device that led to personal computers, cell phones, and DVD players. He was born in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and grew...

Leonardo Torres y Quevedo

Pioneer in remote control technology, Torres y Quevedo developed the Telekino — a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves — presenting it at the Paris Academy of Science in 1903. A...

Jerome Svigals

One of the world's first digital programmers, Svigals worked on developing the first electronic computer as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1950. Born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York,...

Daniel C. Edelstein

Leading expert in copper chip wiring technologies, Edelstein served as Chief Architect and driving force behind IBM's copper chip wiring technologies, first announced in 1997. These were devised to increase the speed...

George Barnard Grant

One of the few Americans to make a significant contribution to mechanical computation prior to the end of the nineteenth century, Grant improved on the Difference Machine calculator and is recognized as...

Jan Aleksander Rajchman

Conceiver of the first read-only memory and developer of the selectively addressable storage tube, Rajchman was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. Although he was born in London, he received the...

Mary Allen Wilkes

Known for her work with the LINC computer, now recognized by many as the world's first personal computer, Wilkes contributed to this landmark machine as a programmer and logic designer. She later...

William (Bill) Worley Jr.

Principal creator of HP's two most important computer architectures, Worley's work includes PA-RISC (Precision Architecture—Reduced Instruction Set Computing) in the 1980s and PA-WW (Wide-Word) in the 1990s. He started programming in 1959 for...

Fujio Masuoka

Inventor of flash memory, Masuoka has carved out a path to a new era whereby consumers are able to carry videos, music, books and data with them wherever they go. Born in...

Blaise Pascal

Inventor of the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, Pascal built twenty of these machines over the following ten years after constructing the first in 1642 following three years...

Mark H. Kryder

Spearheader of the breakthroughs that increased hard-disk densities and accelerated their corresponding drop in price, Kryder is also author of "Kryder's Law," in which he pointed out that if scaling magnetic recording...