Donald Bitzer, RIP
Dag Spicer (via Hacker News):
Bitzer studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), obtaining a PhD in 1960. Following graduation, he joined the UIUC faculty, where he learned of efforts to bring lessons to students over a closed-circuit television network. While a committee of engineers, psychologists, and educators were unable to agree on a single solution at the time, Bitzer wrote up a proposal within a week, got it approved, and immediately started developing his PLATO system for the university’s groundbreaking ILLIAC I computer—the first electronic digital stored program computer built by a university. (PLATO stands for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations).
[…]
To make things easier on the eyes for students sitting in front of computer terminals for many hours at a time, in 1964 Bitzer, with colleague Gene Slottow and graduate student Robert Wilson, invented the flat panel display: plasma screens do not flicker and their clever design also saved memory in the computer by having the display itself store data.
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Rest in peace, Mr. Bitzer. I spent many hours in front of that beautiful amber plasma display on a PLATO IV terminal. I don't know how I was so lucky to be a 13 year old computer kiddie way back when there was no such thing. A few years later when I was in college, I got a junior programmer job in that department, we hooked up an early IBM Laserdisc to the PLATO. It was a big improvement over the noisy air compressor that ran the microfiche projector!
