Alan Kotok (November 9, 1941 – May 26, 2006) was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital, or DEC) and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, describes Kotok and his fellow classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first true hackers.
Kotok was a precocious child who skipped two grades before college....
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Alan Kotok (November 9, 1941 – May 26, 2006) was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital, or DEC) and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, describes Kotok and his fellow classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first true hackers.
Kotok was a precocious child who skipped two grades before college. At MIT he became a member of the Tech Model Railroad Club, and after enrolling in MIT's first freshman programming class, he wrote some of the earliest computer software. He helped to develop what is sometimes called the first video game (Spacewar!), and together his teacher John McCarthy and other classmates, he was part of the team that wrote the Kotok-McCarthy program which took part in the first chess match between computers.
After leaving MIT, Kotok joined the computer manufacturer DEC, where he remained for over 30 years. He was the...
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