The Superheroes of the Technology Industry
A Brief History of The Heroes who Changed the Game
by Matthieu McClintock
It took a lot of the “crazy ones,” as the late Steve Jobs referred to innovators, to build the technological landscape as we know it today. Today being National Superhero Day, we decided to list our “Superheroes of the Technology Industry”, some of which you may know and many of which you may not.
What may shock most are those who are not listed here. Our aim is to recognize the original innovators, the ones who laid the framework that others would further and extend beyond the originators imagination, resources, and abilities at the time of origin. Without those listed below, the world would be a very different place today. We will not bore you with technical details and a history report but only a brief outline of their respective contributions to the tech industry.
Thomas J. Watson — Mr. Watson, born in New York City, served as Chairman and CEO of IBM from 1914–1956 and popularized the original “Business Machine”, known at the time as ‘punched card tabulating machines’ that were the seed that would eventually evolve into the modern day personal computer. During his death in 1956, he was known as the greatest sales person of his time and was responsible for bringing IBM and its Business Machines into the mainstream. You may call him the original tech superhero.
David Packard and William R. Hewlett — Both electrical engineers, Mr. Packard and Mr. Hewlett invested $538 in a joint venture run out of Packard’s garage to manufacture hardware products, namely radio, sonar, radar, nautical, and aviation devices. The company, where Packard proved to be an expert administrator and Hewlett provided many technical innovations, grew into the world’s largest producer of electronic testing and measurement devices. It also became a major producer of calculators, computers, and laser and ink jet printers. So yes, HP actually does stand for something, two great superheroes.
Alan Turing — Aside from helping the allies win World War II by cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma Code, Alan Turing, born in the United Kingdom, is known for his work in mathematical biology, the LU decomposition method for solving matrix equations, and the ‘Turing Test’, known more popularly today as CAPTCHA, a technology to determine whether a subject is a person or a computer. Some consider Turing to be the original superhero of tech as he predicted many technological innovations that came to fruition decades after his untimely death.
John G. Jemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz — These two “crazy ones”, born in Hungary and the United States respectively, are known to some for having designed the first widely adopted computer programming language they called BASIC, an acronym for “Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.” Most people have probably never heard of these two mathematicians since much of BASIC, later known as Visual BASIC, was further advanced and accredited to Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft who did not make the list for this very reason.
Dennis Ritchie — Mr. Ritchie was an American Computer Scientist who single handedly invented and designed the C Programming Language which is still taught in Computer Science Departments across the globe. Aside from inventing the most widely used and extended programming language ever, Mr. Ritchie also developed the UNIX Operating System with long time colleague Ken Thompson. Ironically, both men received the Turing Award in 1983 for their advancements in technology.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs — Probably the two more popular names on the list, Steven Wozniak is hands down the inventor of the Personal Computer. He was a computer scientist and hardware engineer and friend of neighbor Steve Jobs who, upon seeing the personal computer, convinced Wozniak to form a business with him and sell them. Steve Jobs made the list namely because without his intervention, the personal computer would’ve likely stayed in Mr. Wozniak’s garage for a few more decades, leaving us decades behind technologically speaking.
Larry Ellison — ORACLE, a popular relational database system was invented by Larry Ellison in the 1970’s for use by the CIA. In 1982 Oracle Systems Corporation was formed by Mr. Ellison with its flagship product, the ground-breaking Oracle Database that competed directly with IBM. Oracle still exists to this day and is one of the leading companies to develop and market database software and technology, cloud engineering systems and enterprise software products — particularly its own brands of database management systems.
Brendan Eich — An American Technologist, Mr. Eich created what was at the time called Navigator 2.0, later known as Mocha, LiveScript and eventually JavaScript, all in the same month. After its invention and implementation, Brendan Eich continued to oversee and extend the use of JavaScript, the first widely adopted client-side programming language. Mr. Eich then co-founded the wildly popular Mozilla Project with Mitchell Baker. JavaScript, and the frameworks that extend and are built on top of JavaScript have since become the most popular technologies for web development.
Jonathan Abrams — Many people credit Mark Zuckerberg as the inventor of Social Networking but instead it was friendster founder and Canadian Computer Scientist Jonathan Abrams who created the first widely used social network online. After turning down a $30,000,000 offer from Google in 2003, known as one of the biggest business mistakes in Silicon Valley history, MySpace and Facebook took over the social networking industry and Friendster closed its doors. Either way, without the invention by Mr. Abrams, MySpace and Facebook would have never been created in the first place which is why he made our list of superheroes and Mark Zuckerberg did not.
Jonathan Ive — Most people don’t know this but Steve Jobs of Apple Computer did not write code or design and develop software or hardware, he was a marketing visionary. The true genius behind Apple’s product development in the past two decades is British Industrial designer Jonathan Ive who led the teams behind the development of the MacBook, iPod, iMac, iPhone, iPad, and the more recent Apple Watch. Again, sometimes its the guy behind the guy who really is the superhero and/or genius. Many compare Jonathan Ive to Apple’s newer version of Steve Wozniak, the original driver of technological innovation at Apple Computer.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page — Although both men are credited with co-founding Google, it is Larry Page who wrote and patented Google’s PageRank, the consistently evolving algorithm used to return search results in many of today’s most popular search engines. Although Google, now known as Alphabet, is behind many other products, most of them were purchased and the name Google was simply appended to the front of the product’s name. These two men made the list for their innovation in the field of page ranking algorithms as well as their discipline in constant refusals to sell Google and turn it into their own company, currently one of the largest on the planet. They wanted to provide a portal of limitless information to every person on the planet and that’s exactly what they did.
Conclusion
Yes there are many not on this list that deserved it but we’re not writing a book. This is a simple list of those we believe to be the most influential in their respective fields, all of which contributed greatly to the immense developments in technology in the past century. In light of National Superhero Day, we believe it was time to recognize more than just fictional superheroes but those who took giant risks in turbulent times, all of which contributed to moving civilization forward.
When asked where the next titan of the technology industry would come from, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates replied “Any technology related to the advancement of medicine.” So our interest is not only looking at the past but looking to where the current and future “crazy ones” of the tech industry will come from and how they will change the world.
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