Stop Your Steve Jobs lies!! Dr. Mark Dean Invented the PC And He's A Black Man (can it be true??)

"Stop Your Steve Jobs lies!! Dr. Mark Dean Invented the PC And He's A Black Man (can it be true??)"

The bold part is unnecessary and inflammatory. All it does is incite racial tensions between white people and black people. Why include it?

Originally posted by pavil

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
Who did invent the microprocessor? This goes back to the 60's 18 years before Dean went to work for IBM. There are at least 2 schools of thought on this.

Hmmmm.... who did "invent" the microprocessor? Was it invented or was it Reverse Engineered ATS thread

Now thats the ATS I know and love

Crazy people with good information

reply to post by andy06shake


I agree with you, they missed their rightful praise in the past when it would have a been a big deal, doesnt mean by todays standard its still a big deal.

Obviously credit where credits due and he desurves what should have come to him, but the "omg i black dude did somthing" isnt really the right way to go about it these days.

Tiger woods is just a golf man to me.

The point of this thread is to give light to one of those geniuses, who are most totally forgotten just because they did not want/could live a life in the spotlights.

Whether it be a company CEO who bought the right to their inventions, or personal choice, it does not matter. The demigod CEOs like Jobs reap all the glory, while in reality they were just one cog in the much bigger machine.

I do not want to diminish Job's accomplishments by saying this, just point a very critical finger towards the society, and for falling so easy pray to the marketing machine.

Give credit where it is due!

I agree that we ought to give credit where it is due, but that doesn't mean you get to make stuff up. This is not an example of giving credit where it is due; it is an example of giving wrongful credit. Dr. Dean is not without credit. After all, he's in the Inventor's Hall of Fame. That represents recognized credit. That doesn't mean you or I have ever heard of him, but people who know have, and the result is his induction into IHF. He's also an IBM Fellow. It doesn't get much better than that. So let's not pretend Dr. Dean hasn't been awarded the credit and recognition he deserves. He has.

I'm glad that OP has brought Dr. Dean to our attention. That's great, and as he says, we've all learned something. However, he did not invent the PC. Further, although he is given credit for the ISA buss, it's not as if that was an original concept either--nor did the concept last very long.

ISA = "Industry Standard Architecture" A more proper name for it would be the "IBM PC Standard Architecture." To claim it was an "industry standard" is simply not true. The first true "industry standard" buss was called the S-100, which was used in dozens of PCs PRIOR to the Apple ][. This allowed you to attach "cards," which were small circuit boards, to those early computers. Back then you needed a "card" for everything from a video monitor to a modem. The versatility of this approach combined with the open architecture allowed many companies to succeed in the marketplace by making just these cards. Most of those ancient computers used CP/M as an operating system, which is an 8-bit version of what turned into MS-DOS (a story in itself).

When the Apple came out in 1976-77 the IDEA of an "industry standard" architecture was continued, but it was an Apple version. This was still open, but was somewhat smaller than the S-100 industry standard. As usual, Apple was developing its own standard and it was wildly successful, though ONLY used by Apple.

It wasn't until several years later, in 1981, that IBM came out with their first PC with the clear intent to blow Apple out of the water. THAT'S when the ISA was introduced. They did the exact same thing as Apple in that their buss was their own, just like Apple had their own, but unlike the S-100, which was used by many manufacturers. In other words, the ISA was the THIRD major buss system introduced for PCs.

But IBM did something different. They allowed clones of their PC. So while the retail price of an IBM and the Apple ][ were very close to each other, the IBM clones were coming in at half the price. This allowed the IBM type computers to quickly take over the marketplace from Apple, which was in serious trouble at the time. Apple then developed the Mac and changed everything (also another story)

Next, IBM came out with a second generation machine, called the PC-XT, based on a 80286 CPU. The XT used a hybrid buss system. Much of it was the old ISA buss, but the XT also used several slots in an extended format, called an EISA buss. These had an extra set of connections to allow more complex cards. I believe it is in this area that Dr. Dean made his seminal contributions. This was the FOURTH "standard" buss architecture used by PCs in general use.

The "PC" (no longer just an IBM issue) then evolved again into what I would call "specialist" cards, so you began to see special buss structures designed for just video cards, for example. Further, peripherals that were run by these cards began to be integrated on the motherboards themselves. For example, modems were no longer external devices, but were built in. Printer ports were no longer based on cards, but were built in.

Today most people buy a PC and never open it up. The EISA buss structure has shrunk on the motherboard, the most common use being for the video card, which is far different today than the original ISA or EISA buss structure. In other words, the ISA/EISA structure had a limited life of about two decades, which is actually a long time given how fast technology changes. Meanwhile the Mac series of Apple computers remains proprietary and does not use user-accessible cards at all. It's an appliance.

The Mac is still a viable system and many people love it, but it is still not the dominant computer platform, which is still based on the original IBM-PC. Job's influence is far more prevalent in the "i" series of products: iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. which have gone beyond the PC-like platform. He completely changed the music industry, completely changed the cell phone industry, and completely changed the way we, as a whole, interact with the Internet.

Dr. Dean did some great work. He has been rewarded for it, but ket us not hype it into something different than his actual contributions. He did not "invent the PC."

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
"Stop Your Steve Jobs lies!! Dr. Mark Dean Invented the PC And He's A Black Man (can it be true??)"

The bold part is unnecessary and inflammatory. All it does is incite racial tensions between white people and black people. Why include it?

edit on 7/10/2011 by Dark Ghost because: (no reason given)

Agree...I really think the OP should think twice about that sort of thread title in the future. Afterall, if someone posted a thread saying soandso did something (whether they did or not) "And they're a White Man" you'd have people jumping down their throat calling the OP racist. This is no different.

We are all Human regardless of our skin pigmentation.

"Stop Your James T. Kirk lies!! Captain Jean-luc Picard Invented the Picard Manuever And He's a Bald White Englishman Pretending To Be French!!!"

Originally posted by Dark Ghost
"Stop Your Steve Jobs lies!! Dr. Mark Dean Invented the PC And He's A Black Man (can it be true??)"

The bold part is unnecessary and inflammatory. All it does is incite racial tensions between white people and black people. Why include it?

edit on 7/10/2011 by Dark Ghost because: (no reason given)

I never put anything in bold. What are you talking about

reply to post by ProphecyPhD


I placed the last part in bold myself so you would know which part of the title I was referring to when I made my reply. I never insinuated that you placed it in bold yourself.

I got to admit, this guy deserves more recgonition then he has recieved.. but to emphasize black man?? thats going a bit too far....

Since the topic of conversation latly seems to be about Jobs' lying.. what about all the other lies? No one really speaks of them..

Gates didn't invent DOS.. he bought it..

Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit... no modern pc's without that.. but no mainstream credit??

And what about the mouse? Xerox invented that.. no credit there either?

Lets not even talk about Woz.. hes a moron, thief, and con artist in my book..

And if were talking about computers...antikythera mechanism counts as a computer does it not? way before any of these people... but we dont even know who to credit for this one...

Back to my point though, hall of fame or not, this guy should be an everyday name IMO.

And before the geeks ask.... I own a few ipods/itouch's...ipods = rockbox firmware, and itouchs are jailbroken..winxp only for my gaming rig... linux distros for all the rest.

I have a big problem with the amount of money these guys made for there so called inventions..

Originally posted by kingtutankhaten
post removed by staff

SO WHAT??? Did you see any "white" guy present the "white list of fame"..


Maybe one day you will realize that it is YOU that separates yourself from the others not the other way around

reply to post by ProphecyPhD


He didn't invent the PC. He was part of several teams (lead of at least one) that innovated in the field. I have never heard of his "co-inventor" nor any member of the teams that did the reasearch and development on the projects, just the same as I have not heard of him 'til now. Steve Jobs didn't invent the PC either, for the record. He didn't even build the first Apple. IBM did make the first "PC" strictly speaking. That was not the first home computer though. Going back further, much more basic computers using vaccum tubes instead of transitors existed during WWII.

First PC was the Beautiful Xerox Alto introduced in 1973 pictured above! btw those huge things on the right are discs

M. E. Dean and D. L. Moeller share Patent No. 4,528,626 for the ISA BUS

And Mark Dean is mixed race

Black man invented first PC....WRONG!

reply to post by ProphecyPhD


OP, are you black yourself and feel that black inventors should be noted and celebrated as BLACK inventors?

I myself could give a damn if some inventor was black or not. Someone who contributes to technology should be celebrated as a PERSON. What does his race have to do with it.

It's crap like this that CREATES division. Why couldn't you just make a thread about a MAN that invented something? Why are you so concerned it's a "BLACK MAN" as if nobody knew of him because it's all a conspiracy to "keep the black man down"?

Dr Dean didn't invent the 'IBM PC' he was an architect in its design. He was chiefly responsible for the ISA bus - basically a system of connectors and a standard addressing scheme.

Steve Jobs didnt work for IBM so couldnt be responsible for it.

If we want to use the term PC in its purest sense, they have been available since the 60's with microprocessor based ones on sale from 1970. Just look up 'personal computer' on wiki.