Hawkins, William M. "Trip" III (1953- )
Hazen, Harold Locke (1901-1980)
Hebern, Edward Hugh (1869-1952)
Hecht-Nielsen, Robert (1947- )
Henry, Joseph (1797-1878)
Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)
Hewlett, William Redington (1913-2001)
Hillis, W. Daniel (1956- )

William M. "Trip" Hawkins III William M. "Trip" Hawkins III contributed to the early success of the Apple Macintosh computer, founded video game software giant Electronics Arts, and has made numerous contributions to the video gaming industry. Photo courtesy of The 3DO Company

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Hazen, Harold Locke (1901-1980)

Harold Locke Hazen was an electrical engineer who worked on and developed some of the earliest computing machines. Throughout his 48-year career at MIT, Hazen worked on some of technology's more influential projects and with the field's most influential people.

Hazen was born in Philo, Ill., and grew up in Three Rivers, Mich. He came from a family where curiosity was king and he was always encouraged to do worthwhile work. He took his childhood lessons to heart, and he was described as someone with a curiosity so deep and a will to see projects to completion so strong that it bordered on obsession.

His first foray into early computers started when he was an undergraduate at MIT. Part of his thesis for his bachelor's degree, which he earned in 1924, was to help make a more reliable way of running large interconnected electric power systems. To do so required a thorough understanding of the currents, power flows, and voltages in the systems, although they were so complicated the task was nearly impossible. Hazen built a small model of a huge system at General Electric that made figuring calculations possible, which was well received.

The spark to Hazen's potential was Vannevar Bush, who was Hazen's advisor at MIT. Bush was known as a pivotal figure in hypertext research and for his landmark paper called "As We May Think." Another of his groundbreaking projects was the Differential Analyzer, which he worked on with Hazen.

During Hazen's graduate work and subsequently professorship at MIT (he earned his master's degree in 1929 and doctorate in 1931, the same year he was appointed a professor) he started researching the Product Integraph. This was a machine that one of his classmates, Herbert Stewart, developed to calculate integrations used in analysis of electric waves on electrical transmission lines. It became clear that the tool could be used to solve ordinary differential equations, and with a rough draft from Hazen, he and Bush started to build it.

The Differential Analyzer was a large analog machine that by 1930 had been proven to solve complicated problems. The Aberdeen Proving Ground copied it to solve projectile trajectories, and Douglas Hartree in England and the University of Pennsylvania also built replicas for performing calculations.

Gradually, Hazen became less involved in the analyzer and more involved in other pursuits. By 1934, he had built a fast electric servomotor that could be applied to all analog machines. It was an achievement that earned him the Levy Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1935.

He became more involved in MIT, as well, and in 1939 was appointed head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, and eventually dean of the university's graduate school. One of his concerns in his new capacity was to improve the tools and working environment available to students, which had been rudimentary. He served on the National Defense Research Committee during World War II to promote development of technology, and therefore boost resources at MIT. His efforts earned him the President's Certificate of Merit, which President Harry S. Truman awarded to Hazen in 1948.

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Hebern, Edward Hugh (1869-1952)

Edward Hugh Hebern, born in Streator, Ill., was the first American to make a significant contribution to code machines before World War II. His breakthrough was the rotor-based enciphering machine, the style most people think of when considering early coding machines.

Not surprisingly, he conceived of the invention while he had a great deal of time on his hands; he was serving time in San Quentin prison. In about 1908, Hebern stole a horse and was sentenced to serve time in prison. He used the time to start work on what would be called the Hebern Rotor Machine.

When Hebern was released from prison and back at his home in Oakland, Calif., he started building the machine in his shop. Built in 1917, the machine was wired to a brand new invention, called the electric typewriter, and it was made of solid brass. It used a single rotor to scramble the letters typed into the typewriter, replacing one letter with another.

It was a good start, but not without faults. Given the 26-letter alphabet of the English language, it was an easy cipher to crack. In 1925, William Friedman at Cornell University devised a solution to the machine.

Hebern's next machine, the Electric Coding Machine, switched the connections of the electronic typewriter each time a user pressed a key. By 1928, it was secure enough to sell to the U.S. Navy. Hebern built a stream of improved rotor machines from 1921 until World War II, which he also peddled to the Navy. His contributions helped boost the United States' position in cryptology during the war, and rotor machines were the cornerstones of military cryptography for half a century.

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Robert Hecht-Nielsen Robert Hecht-Nielsen is a pioneer in the development of neurocomputing applications, and he co-founded HNC (Hecht-Nielsen Neurocomputing Corp.) Software. Photo courtesy of HNC Software

Hecht-Nielsen, Robert (1947- )

Robert Hecht-Nielsen is a pioneer in the development of neurocomputing applications. He has researched and written extensively on AI (artificial intelligence), including pattern recognition and signal processing algorithms, and he is the author of the "Neurocomputing" textbook.

Hecht-Nielsen is the co-founder and chief scientist of HNC Software, a company that makes and markets intelligent software for various commercial business applications, including detecting credit/debit card fraud, automating lending decisions, and extracting information from customer databases.

The company grew from the Artificial Neural Systems Club Hecht-Nielsen founded in the 1980s. The club was meant to foster ideas about AI and conduct experiments. One of the clubs attendees, Todd Gutschow, and Hecht-Nielsen teamed up to start the company, HNC (Hecht-Nielsen Neurocomputing Corp.)

The son of an interior decorator and musician, Hecht-Nielsen was born in San Francisco and had an early interest in science and technology. He received a bachelor's degree (1971) and a doctorate (1974) in mathematics from Arizona State University. He first worked as an aircraft pilot, but he later found and managed the neurocomputing research and development programs at Motorola from 1979 to 1983 and TRW from 1983 to 1986. He has been an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering, as well as computational neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego since 1985.

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Henry, Joseph (1797-1878)

Joseph Henry's work provided a fundamental basis for the electrical age. Although he never considered himself an inventor, and he never really produced practical devices, he is acknowledged as the person who invented the electric motor and the telegraph.

In 1831, while Henry was a math professor at the Albany Academy, a boys' school in Albany, N.Y., he showed that electromagnetic devices could be used to create power. His oscillating electromagnet motor was little more than an electromagnet that rocked on an axis like a seesaw. He proved mutual induction, self-induction, and electromagnetic relay through his research in electromagnetism. Electromagnetic relay in particular let him develop a telegraph that could be used over long distances.

His first telegraph, which he developed between 1831 and 1832, was a small battery and magnet that were wired together over a mile of copper wire. In the center of the U-shaped magnet was a "permanent" magnet. When he energized the electromagnet, it caused the permanent magnet to be repelled from one end of the copper line and attracted to the other. As the magnet was en route, it tapped a small office bell.

Although some of his contemporaries, such as Samuel Morse, received more recognition for their developments, Henry was never interested in patents. Instead, he came up with the scientific basis for these devices. His inventions were crude prototypes meant to prove the science worked, similar to the way Benjamin Franklin will always be associated with electricity for his kite flying, although he never claimed to have discovered it. Henry waited for his colleagues to improve on the idea.

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Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz proved electricity could move through electromagnetic waves, and the measurement of this frequency is named after him. A Hertz (abbreviated Hz) denotes the number of electrical vibration cycles that occur every second in an electronic device. One Hz equals one cycle per second. In computers, Hertz is used to measure the transmission speed in a computer's internal clock. A measurement of 1MHz (megahertz) indicates 1 million cycles per second.

In 1888, Hertz discovered radio waves by realizing that the principles of electricity first initiated by British scientist James Clerk Maxwell could be applied to waves traveling through air. To prove this, Hertz used an induction coil and a wire-receiving loop to show how electricity could travel back and forth.

Considering he died at just 36 years of age, his discovery was a remarkable achievement. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Hertz didn't immediately go into physics. He started a career in engineering, but by the time he completed a compulsory stint in the military in 1877, he decided to become a scientist instead. He earned his doctorate in physics in 1880 in Berlin. He then taught at a university in Kiel, and a few years later taught at Karlsruhe. While at Karlsruhe, Hertz started his work in electromagnetic waves, or radio waves.

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William Redington Hewlett William "Bill" Redington Hewlett, Hewlett-Packard co-founder, takes some time out to have a laugh. Credit: Hewlett-Packard Archives

Hewlett, William Redington (1913-2001)

William "Bill" Redington Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 20, 1913. At the age of three, he moved to California with his parents, Albion Walter Hewlett and Louise Redington Hewlett. His father, then a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, had joined the faculty at Stanford Medical School. Hewlett claimed his was a "busy and happy" childhood, with time spent with family and developing a love for the outdoors. But Hewlett suffered a loss early when his father died of a brain tumor when the boy was 12. Hewlett said he might have considered a career in medicine had his father not died.

Science was Hewlett's natural forte, a fact that emerged at an early age. It started with homebrewed experiments that could have easily claimed the young scientist. Although he excelled in science at school, he was stymied by dyslexia, which slowed his progress with reading and writing.

Despite his low grades at Lowell High School, Hewlett earned admission to Stanford University where he would eventually earn a degree in engineering in 1934. He went on to earn a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936, and three years later, he received a doctorate from Stanford.

Stanford was the beginning of the rest of Hewlett's life. It was there he met David Packard in his freshman year. One of their instructors, Frederick Terman, encouraged the two men to try their hand at starting an electronics company, and Hewlett-Packard was born.

Equipped with $538 and a drill press from Sears, the two friends set to work in the garage next door to the house Packard lived in (now a California state landmark). They flipped a coin to decide whose name should appear first in the company name. Hewlett won. After a few ad hoc inventions, including an automatic urinal flusher and a tuner for harmonicas, 25-year-old Hewlett invented the audio oscillator, HP's first product. The oscillator solved problems with generating audio signals for newly released FCC (Federal Communications Commission) guidelines. Hewlett and Packard called it the HP200A, intentionally choosing a big number so it sounded like their company had been around awhile. One of HP's first customers was another California startup, Walt Disney Studios, which ordered eight units for work on its new film "Fantasia."

By World War II, the duo had moved out of their garage headquarters and into a rented building in Palo Alto, with Packard as the business man and Hewlett as the idea man. They had built enough of a reputation producing electronics to earn Packard a draft exemption from the war. Not so with Hewlett. Leaving his partner to run the company, Hewlett worked for the Army first in the Signal Corps and rose in ranks to lieutenant colonel and headed the electronics division of the War Department's special staff. He left the service in 1945 and returned to Hewlett-Packard to lead its research and development. He moved to many executive positions within HP. In 1969, he became the company's CEO until he retired in 1977. From then, he settled with the title director emeritus until his death on Jan. 12, 2001.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company would be a first in many regards, both technological and managerial. Some highlights of its technical achievements are the first handheld scientific calculator, which outdated the slide rule, and the LaserJet printer. Many credit modern businesses with the example Hewlett and his partner set. The two were dedicated to treating employees well and being a positive influence on society. "The HP Way," as it would be called, was legendary for valuing its employees for their intellectual capital.

During his life, Hewlett earned many honors, including 13 honorary degrees from various universities, including Yale and Johns Hopkins, and 13 patents over three decades. One of the highlights was in 1985, when he received the National Medal of Science, America's highest science honor, from President Ronald Reagan. In 1991, he took home the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame Award in honor of his professional achievement and contributions to Silicon Valley, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Award for the Variable Frequency Oscillation Generator that launched the company.

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Daniel W. Hillis Daniel W. Hillis, former vice president and Disney Fellow of The Walt Disney Co., developed a parallel processing system that is standard in most of today's supercomputers. Sun Microsystems eventually absorbed his company, Thinking Machines. Credit: Photo for Sun Microsystems, Inc., by Court Mast, Mast Photography

Hillis, W. Daniel (1956- )

W. Daniel Hillis has worked for Walt Disney as a toy designer, has invented some of the most complex supercomputers, and is currently the chairman and chief technology officer of a progressive research and development firm. He once built a working computer out of Tinker Toys, created a full size walking robot dinosaur, pioneered the concept of parallel computers, and thought up the RAID (redundant array of independent disks) disk array technology that is the storage technique for large databases. He's an author, a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor widely respected for his groundbreaking ideas.

Much of his lasting work began when he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from MIT in 1978, where he was eventually appointed adjunct professor at the MIT Media Lab. At the MIT Logo Laboratory Hillis developed computer hardware and software for children and invented computer-oriented toys and games for Milton Bradley. While still in school, he co-founded Terrapin, a company that produced computer software for elementary schools.

He focused on robotics at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory while working on his master's degree, which he received in 1981. Hillis started thinking about the physical limitations of computing and how he might build a massively parallel computer. In 1985 he completed the design of the 64,000-processor computer called the Connection Machine.

Most computer processors are serial, meaning that their single processors can carry out only one task at a time. They look like they're master multitaskers, able to check e-mail while simultaneously running a word processing program, but they're simply extremely fast. Human brains are parallel, meaning that billions of neurons can work all together at once. Brains are slow (think how fast a calculator can multiply 8,459 x 2,355 vs. how fast you can), but they're still infinitely more complex than computer processors.

Hillis made something in between the two with the Connection Machine. He made a computer that had all the regular characteristics of speed, but it could also move in a complex parallel manner like a human brain. The computer can do multiple tasks at super speed.

Ostensibly the topic for his doctorate, which he received in computer science in 1988, it was also the basis for his company, Thinking Machines. Founded in 1983, Thinking Machines lasted 11 years, and while it never made Hillis wealthy, it made him famous. He recruited some of the nation's top minds in science and engineering, including physicist Richard Feynman, to develop and tweak the Connection Machine, as well as invent the RAID disk arrays that are the standard now. The team worked to come up with different applications for the technology, including uses for aircraft design, financial analysis, computer graphics, and neurobiology.

He continued his revolutionary work at Thinking Machines until he left in 1994, when the supercomputing industry fizzled out, to start DHSH, a consulting company with Walt Disney as a client. Just a year later, he'd been hired on as a full-time Disney Fellow in the Imagineering department. While there, he designed the technologies that run games and rides.

Hillis said he'd dreamed of working for Disney since he was a kid, and it seemed destined to happen, considering his lifetime interest in gadgetry. He was born in Baltimore in 1956 to a father who was an Air Force epidemiologist and a mother who had a firm understanding of math. The family was constantly moving, following hepatitis outbreaks in places such as Zaire and Kenya, so Hillis was home schooled. His mother's prowess as a teacher and his father's encouragement to study biology led to his later career making complex computer systems that mimic animal activity, such as a "thinking machine."

He returned to consulting with the founding of Applied Minds. The company covers a wide area, but it provides technologies, creative design, and consulting services to the entertainment industry. Hillis has also invented a clock, still in development, that is meant to last 10,000 years and is powered by the seasonal climate.

As of 2001, he's earned 40 U.S. patents for inventions including disk arrays and a color camera.

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