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Apple and touchscreens is a bit of an outlier here. History remembers the following guys, but few know who made billions putting it into stuff: 1. Jack Kirby a
by shas3 11y ago
Apple and touchscreens is a bit of an outlier here. History remembers the following guys, but few know who made billions putting it into stuff:
1. Jack Kirby and IC
2. Bardeen, Shockley,and Brattain and semiconductors
3. Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura and blue leds
4. Boyle and Smith for CCD arrays
5. Townes, Pokhorov, and Basov for lasers
6. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins for structure of DNA
It's besides the point that some of them weren't necessarily in academia.
You can find their names, their speeches, their books and papers in any library or in many places online. Whilst, who remembers CEOs of Intel (notable exceptions apart), or of the 10s of other important semiconductor IC companies, or of companies that made commercial 'laser' disc and cd drives, or biotech companies, etc.?
- t2015_08_25 11y ago> who remembers CEOs of Intel You're right. We should pity those poor CEOs of Intel who have nearly no recognition except for daily news articles and a single wikipedia page, leaving their wretched souls with merely their 8 figure annual salaries to comfort themselves. Surely we can do something to get them what they really deserve? Won't someone please think of the Intel CEOs?
- Chinjut 11y agoHistory remembers everyone. But the layperson has never heard of most of these folks. The choice between such low-level fame vs. billions in fortune (along with its own low-level fame) is, well, not a very evenly-matched one.
- nolepointer 11y ago*Jack Kilby Sorry, but until I did further searching, you had me believing that a comic book artist was also responsible for the development of the integrated circuit!
- cryoshon 11y agoYou forgot Franklin on point 6. She deserves more credit than Wilkins, anyway.