Russell Kirsch, RIP
Computer scientist Russell A. Kirsch, the inventor of the pixel and an undisputed pioneer of digital imaging, passed away on Tuesday in his Portland home from complications arising from a form of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 91 years old.
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As DPReview points out, Kirsch never stopped improving on his most famous invention, even after retiring in 2001. In a 2010 interview with WIRED, he outlined his attempts to create a system that uses “variable shaped pixels” instead of the squares that have dominated digital imaging since he invented them.
In 1951 Kirsch joined the National Bureau of Standards as part of the team that ran SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer). SEAC was the U.S.’s first stored-program computer to become operational, having entered service in 1950.
Russell Kirsch (via Hacker News):
I’ve been against Macintosh company lately. They’re trying to get everyone to use iPads and when people use iPads they end up just using technology to consume things instead of making things. With a computer you can make things. You can code, you can make things and create things that have never before existed and do things that have never been done before.
That’s basically what Alan Kay said. There’s just something about him calling Apple “Macintosh company.”
