Black History Month: African Americans who changed the Tech World: Mark Dean

I want to present you with another African American who has changed the world of technology

Mark Dean

African American inventor and Computer Scientist and Engineer
Birthday:  March 2, 1957




Let me introduce you to Mark Dean, a man credited to launching the modern Computer Age!  How you may ask? After college Dean started to work at IBM where he is still associated with today. 

First, along with Dennis Moeller, Dean developed the ISA or Industry Standard Architecture!  Ok, right now you may be asking what is that?  This is the system that allows you to plug peripheral devices disk drives, printers, and monitors to your computer! 
 Speaking of monitors, Dean's work lead to the creation of the color PC monitor!  That's right if your are looking at a monitor right now you can thank Mark Dean.

Oh and that is not all, in 1999 he lead a team of engineers at IBM's Austin, Texas lab to create the first gigahertz chip! The processor chip or CPU is basically the brain of the computer and its clock speed is generally used to determine the overall speed which is measured in hertz. Hertz is a measure of frequency in cycles per second. 1 gigahertz equals one billion cycles per second!  Thanks to Dean, the home PC became a lot faster and smarter.

Dean also holds three out of the nine original patents at IBM and his name is associated with 20 other patents.  IN 1996, he was the first African American to be named an IBM Fellow and a year later he was honed with the Black Engineer of the Year President's Award and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Its Funny, the man responsible for the modern day personal computer; the desktop. Now says that he only uses tablets.  He said "When I helped design the PC, I didn't think I'd live long enough to witness its decline,"

Know Your History.