Hidden Heroes

Alan Kay is one of the most widely lauded of the early digital pioneers and the inventor of Dynabook, the direct predecessor of modern laptops, tablet computers, and e-books.

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Grace Hopper programmed one of the very first computers ever made and helped design one of the first programming languages. But more than anything else, Grace Hopper’s legacy lies in the fact that she made these remarkable new machines more human.

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When Apple unveiled the multitouch Interface with the iPhone launch in 2007, it seemed as though computing had been reinvented overnight. But in reality, it was an innovation three decades in the making.

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Fifty years ago, the computer scientist Nasir Ahmed came up with a brilliant idea for compressing data, laying the groundwork for Zoom, YouTube, Instagram, and all the other cornerstones of today's image-based online life.

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As a young African American girl living on a farm during the Great Depression, Gladys West discovered she had a gift for math. Forty years later, she mapped the shape of Earth and helped invent GPS.

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Three decades ago, Phil Zimmermann almost went to jail so that you could send an email without worrying that your personal data would be stolen.

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More than 50 years ago, Douglas Engelbart gave the “mother of all demos” that transformed software forever. The computer world has been catching up with his vision ever since.

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More than two decades ago, Web pioneer Lou Montulli invented browser software cookies with the goal of preserving user privacy online. But then things took an unexpected turn.

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We take it for granted that decentralized networks like the Internet “just work.” But decades ago, pioneering computer scientist Radia Perlman solved a crucial problem that made those networks possible.

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Belgian-born computer scientist Pattie Maes was inventing the core principles behind the social media age when Mark Zuckerberg was still in kindergarten. Why have her contributions been neglected?

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