Chuck Thacker is something of a hero in the world of technology yet outside of it, he remains a virtual unknown. Show people a photo of say Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and I bet quite a few people on the street will know who they are. Certainly they will have heard of them and probably have one or more of their products but Chuck Thacker is a different kettle of fish. And that's a shame given the influence he has had on so much of our lives. In short, Chuck is the man who essentially gave us the personal computer. In 1974 he switched on the Xerox Alto, the first computer that looked and worked like the PCs we are all so familiar with today. Incidentially, it's first task was to display an image of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster. While working at the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre he also helped pioneer another major advance in the world of computing, namely the Ethernet LAN (Local Area Network). He has also been involved in a host of computer architecture advancements, the tablet PC and even did work on the X box. Today Mr Thacker works for Microsoft . I met him recently at their Silicon Valley labs where the world's number one software company had thrown open their doors to the press and school kids to display what innovations they are working on. The white haired and bespectacled Mr Thacker is still getting his hands dirty. He was happily showing off his work on a hardware platform called the BEE3 which he hopes will return ...
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Chuck Thacker is something of a hero in the world of technology yet outside of it, he remains a virtual unknown. Show people a photo of say Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and I bet quite a few people on the street will know who they are. Certainly they will have heard of them and probably have one or more of their products but Chuck Thacker is a different kettle of fish. And that's a shame given the influence he has had on so much of our lives. In short, Chuck is the man who essentially gave us the personal computer. In 1974 he switched on the Xerox Alto, the first computer that looked and worked like the PCs we are all so familiar with today. Incidentially, it's first task was to display an image of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster. While working at the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre he also helped pioneer another major advance in the world of computing, namely the Ethernet LAN (Local Area Network). He has also been involved in a host of computer architecture advancements, the tablet PC and even did work on the X box. Today Mr Thacker works for Microsoft . I met him recently at their Silicon Valley labs where the world's number one software company had thrown open their doors to the press and school kids to display what innovations they are working on. The white haired and bespectacled Mr Thacker is still getting his hands dirty. He was happily showing off his work on a hardware platform called the BEE3 which he hopes will return ...