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"America's High Tech
"Invisible Man"
by Tyrone D. Tabon
 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 dryer,
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.
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