"America's High Tech "Invisible Man"

[XXPANTHAXX]

By Tyrone D. Taborn

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-American 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.
_____
http://www.blackengineer.com/artman/...icle_195.shtml

[RecoveringAA]

Greetings Family,


Double X ~ Can WE say BLACKniFIceNT post...


Thank you so much for being on the case. So much power WE the Afrikan people have which frequently falls to the wayside. Just imagine what WE would have if so many of OUR youth were granted the privileges of BE~coming all they can.

thanks for allowing me to share