
The Lonesome Tale Of An Unsung Computer Genius - cmiller1
I posted this on reddit a little while ago, but not many people really saw it, so I figured this community could perhaps appreciate it a little more.<p>As a tech geek, you come to respect a number of the greats in computing history.<p>Perhaps it's Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates or a personal favorite of mine, Edsger Dijkstra. There is one genius of the history of computing that doesn't have much fame or notoriety, and I couldn't even find his name on a reddit search. This man created the concepts behind the idea of our modern computers. Running a graphical operating system on a limited, simplifed, chipset and mostly just the CPU, rather than having to use specialized hardware. Now he, apparently, lives a sad and lonely life in California, occasionally making his only human contact on the way to Whole Foods to pick up some groceries.<p>I am talking about Burrell Smith, the Apple engineer who designed the motherboard for the first Macintosh and found ways to shoe-horn upgrades into older computers in ways no one ever thought possible.<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrell_Smith<p>You can find some amazing stories about his genius and unique personality here:
http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?characters=Burrell%20Smith<p>What has become of him today?
http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/07/lonesome-tale-of-burrell-smith.html<p>According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs there is a chance Burrell suffered from schizophrenia during the 1990s... I don't know. I just feel sad reading about what has become of him and wish we could tell him somehow that there are geeks out there that appreciate the work that he has done and his unparalleled creativity in the field of hardware engineering.
======
1123581321
How do you know he is sad? How do you know he would want to hear that young
people admire his work? You have never had a chance to tell Steve Jobs you
admire him; did he suffer because of that?

I think Burrell has had a happier life than Jobs, honestly -- and he is still
alive. Plus, Jobs and Hertzfeld make/made sure he has the help he needs.

That said, the different paths the Macintosh team have taken through life are
good to dwell on. None of us know where our lives will take us.

