Submission + - Don Bitzer, Creator of Greatest Computer Network You Never Heard Of, Dead at 90 2
theodp writes: No newspaper obit yet, but Brian Dear writes on Mastodon: "Wow...end of an era. Dr. Donald L. Bitzer, creator of the PLATO system, and co-inventor of many key technologies like the AC gas-plasma flat-screen display, passed away yesterday at 90. Don was the main person I wrote about in my book The Friendly Orange Glow. No words. RIP, Don." In a separate email, Dear added, "I never ever met a more generous, supportive, enthusiastic person in the world. [..] He was an inspiration to us all, and to the world, which he made a better place."
The late film critic Roger Ebert reported on PLATO's potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 article he wrote for the News-Gazette while still in high school. In a 1981 appearance on the Phil Donahue Show, Bitzer demoed some of PLATO's capabilities to a studio audience, including bit-mapped graphics on a flat-screen plasma panel, back-projected color images for storytelling, touch input (infrared), speech (English and Swedish), computer-generated music with animated notes, texting over the PLATO network, email, screen sharing, and primitive text-to-animation prompting. Bitzer also describes his vision of the future, which included households connected to a "world wide network" ("probably within the next 5-10 years"), autonomous cars (in 30-60 years), AI, digital libraries, and cloud computing.
PLATO, as VIce reported, was the greatest computer network you've never heard of. And that includes the likes of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who marveled that his kids could code online in 2014, unaware that 650 students were learning programming online with Don Bitzer's PLATO at the Univ. of Illinois during the Spring 1975 semester (Duncan was a 1987 Harvard grad).
The late film critic Roger Ebert reported on PLATO's potential to deliver online learning to homebound students in a 1962 article he wrote for the News-Gazette while still in high school. In a 1981 appearance on the Phil Donahue Show, Bitzer demoed some of PLATO's capabilities to a studio audience, including bit-mapped graphics on a flat-screen plasma panel, back-projected color images for storytelling, touch input (infrared), speech (English and Swedish), computer-generated music with animated notes, texting over the PLATO network, email, screen sharing, and primitive text-to-animation prompting. Bitzer also describes his vision of the future, which included households connected to a "world wide network" ("probably within the next 5-10 years"), autonomous cars (in 30-60 years), AI, digital libraries, and cloud computing.
PLATO, as VIce reported, was the greatest computer network you've never heard of. And that includes the likes of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who marveled that his kids could code online in 2014, unaware that 650 students were learning programming online with Don Bitzer's PLATO at the Univ. of Illinois during the Spring 1975 semester (Duncan was a 1987 Harvard grad).
Additional Links (Score:2)
RIP Dr Don Bitzer [trvth.org] (Brian Dear's announcement of Bitzer's passing) and Aaron Woolfson on Bitzer [facebook.com]: "Not only did he invent a computer system called PLATO, which many of us grew up using and learning, but he was very encouraging of how it could be used as a foundation to build our own apparatuses and technologies. Don felt that everyone had a fiduciary responsibly to help others in any way that they could, without pre-judgement and without pre-qualification. If you were capable of learning something, and advanc
Computer History Museum Obit (Score:2)
In Memoriam: Donald Bitzer, 1934-2024 [computerhistory.org]