Charles P. Thacker (“Chuck” to those who knew him), who helped pioneer many aspects of the personal computer, and who was awarded the 2009 ACM A.M. Turing Award in recognition of his pioneering design and realization of the first modern personal computer, and for his contributions to Ethernet and the tablet computer, died Monday, June 12, at the age of 74, after a brief illness.
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Thacker spent the 1970s and 1980s at PARC. During this period, he served as leader of the project that developed the Xerox Alto personal computer system, the first computer designed from the ground up to support an operating system based on a graphical user interface. The hardware of the Alto, introduced in 1973, was designed mostly by Thacker, with Lampson developing its software.
It’s hard to put into words how much this man – and his peers and team at Xerox – contributed to the world of computing. What an incredible genius to lose.
Thank you for your immeasurable contributions, good sir.
There are few real innovators in computing, too many are celebrated as such who were successful imitators really (cough Steve Jobs). This man and his team were the real deal, and we are all in their debt.
Jobs was mostly an innovator in the true sense of the word. Thacker was a great inventor.
On remembering the reading of that visit at Palo Alto, can’t less than feel a sense of -back stabbing. Of course, law and decency are different concepts. While Sun being eaten alive by vultures, a déjà vu, again.
Little compassion -at times, on USA Intellectual Property claims. They’re wild, whenever they please.