Tech Luminaries

A list of 'things you cannot live without' is incomplete without mobile phone. The device has become so powerful today that thinking life without it is impossible. Both form factor and usage of mobile has changed dramatically when we compare current usage patterns and functionality with those in old days. Let's talk about the person who started all this.

Mobile: Martin Cooper

Former Motorola Vice President, Martin Cooper was born in Chicago, USA. Martin Cooper in 1970s led the team that developed the handheld mobile phone. Cooper is the CEO and founder of Array Comm, a company that works on researching smart antenna technology and improving wireless networks. He was the corporate director of Research and Development for Motorola. He completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1950, and was hired by Motorola in 1954. Along with the job, he attended classes and studied at night to earn a master's degree in electrical engineering in 1957. Cooper worked on developing portable products, including the first portable handheld police radios, made for the Chicago police department in 1967. In 1973, he directed the research and development team to create the first portable cellular 800 Mhz phone. Cooper is considered the inventor of the first handheld cellular phone and the first person to make a phone call in public on a handheld cell phone.

Ethernet cable or LAN cable is the primary channel through which your computer communicates with outer world. Whoever has used a desktop would know about 'Internet' cable. Let's delve deep into the brain behind.

Ethernet: Robert Metcaife

While looking for new topic of thesis for his doctorate, Metcaife read a paper about the ALOHA network at the University of Hawaii. The ALOHAnet is a radio packet communication network created by Norman Abramson and Franklin Koo. This network used a new method of medium access (ALOHA random access) and experimental UHF frequencies for its operation. Since frequency assignments for communications to and from a computer were not available for commercial applications in the 1970s, cables and satellites were used instead. Metcaife identified and fixed some of the bugs in the AlohaNet model and made his analysis part of a revised thesis, which earned him his Harvard PhD in 1973. His earlier thesis on APRnet was rejected by Harvard. Metcalfe was working at Xerox PARC in 1973 when he and David Boggs invented Ethernet, a standard for computers over short distances. Metcalfe identifies the day Ethernet was born as May 22, 1973; the day he circulated a memo titled "Alto Ethernet" which contained a rough schematic of how it would work. In 1979, Metcalfe departed PARC and founded 3Com, a manufacturer of computer networking equipment.

In 1980, he received the Association for Computing Machinery Grace Murray Hopper Award for his contributions to the development of local networks, specifically Ethernet.

Soon we would get mobile with quad core processor which is huge for a device we keep in our pocket. Have you ever wondered, who was the man behind the idea of a computing device which would outperform others?

Super Computer: Seymour Cray

Such is his contribution to supercomputing that Cray is also known as 'the father of supercomputing'. He co-founded Control Data Corp in 1957, and built the world's first supercomputer --the control data 6600 in the 1960s. Control Data 6600 was followed by Control Data 7600, Cray-1, and Cray-2. These supercomputers were widely used in defence, weather prediction and oil exploration. The USP of these machines was their speed which helped solve complex mathematical calculations and analysis of huge chunk of data. Cary is also credited with building world's first computer --CIC 1604, that used radio transistor instead of vacuum tube. Transistors made machines faster, more reliable, and less bulky.

Cray was somewhat a lonely genius who could design supercomputers using graph paper and was reputed to investigate and rectify faults in his machines all by himself.

Cray died in a Jeep accident; ironic part about his death was that the Jeep that met accident was crash tested by simulation on Cray's machines.