“Mr. Make It Work” has finally been recognized for doing so.
Computer science pioneer Chuck Thacker has been awarded with the A.M. Turing Award, considered computing’s Nobel Prize.
Part of the influential and innovative group that worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, in the 1970s, Thacker is among those credited with the invention of the Ethernet, laser printing and the Alto, which itself pioneered the graphical user interface found on more than a billion computers today and WYSIWYG (”what you see is what you get”) word processing.
Here’s Thacker as quoted by Microsoft, where he remains a fellow:
It’s very gratifying. When people say, ‘What have you done for Microsoft lately?’ I say: ‘You don’t understand. The most impact I’ve had on Microsoft was work that was done before Microsoft even existed, when Bill [Gates] was in short pants.
Thacker is also credited with developing the Microsoft Tablet PC, which almost a decade after its debut, has captivated the industry in its latest form, the Apple iPad.
Here’s a video about Thacker put together by Microsoft for the occasion.
