[ale] Missing photo

Scott Plante splante at insightsys.com
Mon Sep 27 12:14:06 EDT 2021


What irony that the founder of the OS with the brand character named "Tux"
didn't want to receive an award because he'd have to wear a tux!? 😝

Great story--thanks for sharing!

On Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 3:29 PM jon.maddog.hall--- via Ale <ale at ale.org>
wrote:

> I am sure that there are many people that are not represented in that row
> of pictures:
>
> Alan Turing - considered to be the father of computer science, broke the
> enigma code, cut two years off WW II, saved an estimated 14,000,000 lives.
>
> Dr. Maurice Wilkes - Head of the EDSAC Project (first computer that could
> store its own programming in its own memory); credited with creating
> microcode, credited with creation of subroutines
>
> Ken Thompson
>
> Dennis Ritchie
>
> Douglas McIlroy - Head of the department that hired Ken and Dennis,
> conceived of pipes and filters, wrote some of first Unix commands to
> demonstrate their use, credited with the creation of macros.
>
> Vint Cerf - Considered to be the Father of the Internet
>
> Sir Tim Berners-Lee - Considered to be the Father of the WWW
>
> Richard M. Stallman - started GNU project and FSF
>
> There are many, many more.
>
> The Computer History Museum (CHM) has a "Hall of Fellows", where they
> induct three people every year.
>
> https://computerhistory.org/hall-of-fellows/
>
> About the year 2005 I started thinking that it would be a shame if either
> Bill Gates or Steve Jobs got inducted into the Hall of Fellows before Linus
> did, so I got online and nominated Linus for induction.    Then I forgot
> about it.
>
> Two years later I got a telephone call from the CHM that Linus had been
> selected for the year 2008 and could I help CHM convince Linus that he
> really wanted to attend the ceremony (which he normally hates) to receive
> it.
>
> I told them I was very happy that Linus had received the award and I would
> try to convince him to show up....but no promises.
>
> I started to look at their web pages, and got an idea.   I called up Linus
> (who by that time knew he had been inducted) and asked him if he would go.
> "I would have to wear a Tuxedo", Linus said.   "I hate that".
>
> "I know, but you would also get to turn the crank of a full-size replica
> of the Babbage Difference Engine, and see it compute" I said.
>
> "I will go", Linus said.   And he did go.   And he did crank the engine.
> All was good.
>
> And to this day neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs have been
> inducted....but The Woz made it in early.
>
> And now you know the rest of the story.
>
> md
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20210927/9308b9e4/attachment.htm>


More information about the Ale mailing list