Photo Source: Computer History Museum
Lynn Conway, emeritus professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, wrote a pioneering textbook with Carver Mead, "Introduction to VLSI Systems". This was the definitive text on how to design computer chips, used by many attendees at the event.
John Crawford was the chief architect for Intel's 386 and 486 microprocessors and one of two design managers for the next generation Pentium. These chips were the engines for personal computers, branded by the slogan "Intel Inside".
It's not often that a business leader, as opposed to a technical leader, becomes a Computer History Museum Fellow. Irwin Jacobs studied electrical engineering at Cornell, then went on to MIT to get a PhD. Jacobs is best known for co-founding Qualcomm, a San Diego company, that makes chips for cellphones and for fiscal year 2013 was a $25B company. The company started by tracking vehicles, but then pioneered CDMA technology that was notably used by Sprint and in Korea, the other main cellphone technology being GSM. Since then the company has gone on to make high-speed LTE components that fuel 4G networks.
I used to be a regular attendee at the Fellow Awards, as my husband is a trustee of the museum, but having skipped a few years, it was encouraging to see the tremendous progress the museum has made under the leadership of its CEO and president, John Hollar. He started the evening by rattling off statistics and listing people who'd visited the museum ? Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, California governor, Jerry Brown, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Natanyahu and more.
Earlier in the day, driving back from the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit at San Francisco's de Young museum, I had listened to a Computer History Museum interview on "The Art and Technology of Cirque du Soleil". Welby Altidor, Cirque's Director of Creation and Matthew Whelan, its Technical Director, were interviewed by Will Travis, CEO of creative agency Sid Lee USA that has partnered with Cirque du Soleil. The interview discussed technologies behind Las Vegas's Michael Jackson Cirque show. The show demonstrates how far computers have come in augmenting the skill of acrobats and gymnasts to create dazzling experiences using multiple lights, screens, GPS technologies and animations. The Cirque du Soleil interview is part of the Computer History Museum's Revolutionaries Series that honors computer pioneers. It is aired on KQED Plus TV on Tuesday evenings and broadcast at 2 p.m. on Saturdays.
Opening the weekend of May 10th/11th the Computer History Museum is partnering with Google to look at the history of autonomous vehicles. On Saturday May 31st and Sunday June 1st, rides will be offered to the public. However, all spots are now full. You've probably seen the Google Self-Driving Cars around Mountain View. Even if you can't get a ride in a car, you can learn about the technologies that help them navigate by visiting the Computer History Museum.
