Sunday 6 March 2011

The Black PC Inventor



As a software developer, I've always wondered why there are almost no famous black people in computer and ICT field. Was it that black people were never interested in that field or were they denied opportunities during the early days of the computers.
Actually none of the above was the case. Actually some black people have made their mark in the IT field but are just never celebrated.

One very good example is Mark Dean, a vice president at IBM. Mark Dean literally invented the personal computer as we know it. He is the architect of the personal computer and holds three of the the original nine patents that all PCs are based upon.

Without Dean's work, people like Bill Gates and Michael Dell will never be where they are today. But yet, the 20th anniversary of the personal computer was celebrated without anybody mentioning his name.

Dr Mark Dean later made history again by leading the team that created the first 1-gigahertz processor chip.

Dr Dean made my past assumption that black people never participated in the computer revolution wrong. In fact it is not wrong to say that he brought about the revolution itself.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing piece. And it's so sad that I find your article here today, Feb. 11, 2013, and am the first and only one to post a comment. I discovered Dr. Mark Dean about seven years ago in an email. I will now share your article and more...
    Change Agent
    Jen :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Jennifer. Please feel free to share

    ReplyDelete