Dr. Mark Dean
Computer Scientist & Pioneer
Black up ya computer
 You may not have heard of Dr. Mark Dean. And you aren't alone.
But almost everything in your life has been affected by his
work. See, Dr.Mark Dean is a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
He is in the National Hall of Inventors. He has more than
30 patents pending. He is a vice president with IBM. Oh, yeah.
And he is also the architect of the modern-day personal computer.
Dr. Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer
that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark Dean is an African
American.
So how is it that we can celebrate the 20th anniversary
of the IBM personal computer without reading or hearing a
single word about him? Given all of the pressure mass media
are under about negative portrayals of African Americans on
television and in print, you would think it
would be a slam dunk to highlight someone like Dr. Dean.
Somehow, though, we have managed to miss the shot. History
is cruel when it comes to telling the stories of African Americans.
Dr. Dean isn't the first Black inventor to be overlooked.
Consider John Stanard, inventor of the refrigerator, George
Sampson, creator of the clothes dryer, Alexander Miles and
his elevator, Lewis Latimer and the electric lamp.
All of these inventors share two things: One, they changed
the landscape of our society; and, two, society relegated
them to the footnotes of history. Hopefully, Dr. Mark Dean
won't go away as quietly as they did. He certainly shouldn't.
Dr.Dean helped start a Digital Revolution that created people
like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Dell Computer's Michael Dell.
Millions of jobs in information technology can be traced back
directly to Dr. Dean. More important, stories like Dr. Mark
Dean's should serve as inspiration for African children. Already
victims of the "Digital Divide" and failing school
systems, young, Black kids might embrace technology with more
enthusiasm if they knew someone like Dr. Dean already was
leading the way.
Although technically Dr. Dean can't be credited with creating
the computer -- that is left to Alan Turing, a pioneering
20th-century English mathematician, widely considered to be
the father of modern computer science -- Dr. Dean rightly
deserves to take a bow for the
machine we use today. The computer really wasn't practical
for home or small business use until he came along, leading
a team that developed the interior architecture (ISA systems
bus) that enables multiple devices, such as modems and printers,
to be connected to personal computers. In other words, because
of Dr. Dean, the PC became a part of our daily lives. For
most of us, changing the face of society would have been enough.
But not for Dr. Dean. Still in his early forties, he has a
lot of inventing left in him.
He recently made history again by leading the design team
responsible for creating the first 1-gigahertz processor chip.
It's just another huge step in making computers faster and
smaller. As the world congratulates itself for the new Digital
Age brought on by the personal computer, we need to guarantee
that the African-American story is part of the hoopla surrounding
the most stunning technological advance the world has ever
seen.
We cannot afford to let Dr. Mark Dean become a footnote
in history. He is well worth his own history book.
|
