[clug] Who's famous in the 80's and 2000's?

[steve jenkin]

Brett Worth wrote on 11/1/09 4:47 PM:
> steve jenkin wrote:
> 
>> I struck a blank for the 1980's and post 2000.
> 
> What about Gordon Bell for the 80's?  Or would he be more from the 70's?
> 
> The reason I suggested him is because from where I stood the 80's seemed to belong to DEC.
> 
> Brett

Brett,

As always, great response! Thank you.

Gordon Bell definitely deserves a place in Steve's List of Important IT
Dudes.

If IBM created corporate computing from 1965 - 1980, then DEC redefined
it with the VAX 11/780 and family. Before they went belly up  :-)

My little piece was somewhat misleading - I'm categorising people into
decades by when they started in computing, not when they started their
best/most notable work - though it often coincides.

By my tortured logic, Gordon Bell goes into either 50's (by age) or 60's
(he started @ DEC in 1960).

Seymour Cray began with ERA in 1950 - that was taken over Remington Rand
, then Sperry & called 'UNIVAC' division.
Cray goes into my 1950 decade.

For Extra Credit, or another way to waste some time, I was trying to
identify the Big Themes of the decades as well - the sorts of things
that limited systems or took the most time/focus.

This is my first cut - another pair of eyes would be great:

1930 - 1950 keeping it running
1950 - 1960 Program Size, External Storage-speed/size
1960 - 1970 Single Instruction set, VM, Transaction Proc.
1970 - 1980 Disk & tape speed/size, DB perf, serial-line perf
1980 - 1990 PC's: RAM, Unix: window sys, display resol.
1990 - 2000 LAN Speeds, CD size, Network File sharing
2000 - 2010 Internet speed, Security, data interchange/reuse

cheers
steve


-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
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