You may not have heard of Dr. Mark Dean. And you aren't alone. But
almost
everything in your life has been affected by his work.

See, Dr. Mark Dean is a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is in the
National Hall of Inventors. He has more than 30 patents pending. He
is a
vice president with IBM. Oh, yeah. And he is also the architect of
the
modern-day personal computer. Dr. Dean holds three of the original
nine
patents on the computer that all PCs are based upon. And, Dr. Mark
Dean is
an African American.

So how is it that we can celebrate the 20th anniversary of the IBM
personal
computer without reading or hearing a single word about him? Given
all of
the pressure mass media are under about negative portrayals of
African
Americans on television and in print, you would think it would be a
slam
dunk to highlight someone like Dr. Dean. Somehow, though, we have
managed
to miss the shot.

History is cruel when it comes to telling the stories of African
Americans.
Dr. Dean isn't the first Black inventor to be overlooked. Consider
John
Stanard, inventor of the refrigerator; George Sampson, creator of the
clothes drier; Alexander Miles and his elevator; Lewis Latimer and
the
electric lamp. All of these inventors share two things: One, they
changed
the landscape of our society; and, two, society relegated them to the
footnotes of history. Hopefully, Dr. Mark Dean won't go away as
quietly as
they did. He certainly shouldn't. Dr. Dean helped start a Digital
Revolution that created people like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Dell
Computer's Michael Dell. Millions of jobs in information technology
can be
traced back directly to Dr. Dean.

More important, stories like Dr. Mark Dean's should serve as
inspiration
for African-American children. Already victims of the "Digital
Divide" and
failing school systems, young, Black kids might embrace technology
with
more enthusiasm if they knew someone like Dr. Dean already was
leading the
way.

Although technically Dr. Dean can't be credited with creating the
computer
-- that is left to Alan Turing, a pioneering 20th-century English
mathematician, widely considered to be the father of modern computer
science -- Dr. Dean rightly deserves to take a bow for the machine we
use
today. The computer really wasn't practical for home or small
business use
until he came along, leading a team that developed the interior
architecture (ISA systems bus) that enables multiple devices, such as
modems and printers, to be connected to personal computers. In other
words,
because of Dr. Dean, the PC became a part of our daily lives.

For most of us, changing the face of society would have been enough.
But
not for Dr. Dean. Still in his early forties, he has a lot of
inventing
left in him. He recently made history again by leading the design
team
responsible for creating the first 1-gigahertz processor chip. It's
just
another huge step in making computers faster and smaller.

As the world congratulates itself for the new Digital Age brought on
by the
personal computer, we need to guarantee that the African-American
story is
part of the hoopla surrounding the most stunning technological
advance the
world has ever seen.

We cannot afford to let Dr. Mark Dean become a footnote in history.
He is
well worth his own history book.

By Tyrone D. Taborn

Tyrone D. Taborn is publisher of Hispanic Engineer and US Black
Engineer &
Information Technology magazines. He can be reached at
tyrone.taborn@...

Forwarded from a D.C. connection.

Subj: Fwd: America's Hi-Tech "Invisible Man"
Date: 9/7/01 4:44:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: BVHOLCOMB
Forwarded by Arlene Burke/Chicago/IBM on 09/06/2001
America's Hi-Tech "Invisible Man"
From: Chandra Washington" <chandra_57@...>