Computer History Museum Announces its 2016 Fellow Award Honorees

Operating systems, early personal computing, and hardware description language Celebrated at Annual Awards Ceremony


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 17, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Computer History Museum (CHM), the world's leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society announces winners of the 2016 Fellow Awards.

  • David Cutler—For his fundamental contributions to computer architecture, compilers, operating systems and software engineering.
  • Lee Felsenstein—For his influence on the technical and social environment of the early personal computing era.
  • Philip Moorby—For his invention and promotion of the Verilog hardware description language.

The three Fellows will be inducted into the Museum's Hall of Fellows on Saturday, April 16, 2016, at a formal ceremony where attended by the "Who's Who" of Silicon Valley technology leaders and Museum supporters.

David Neil Cutler has written some of the most important operating systems of the past 30 years, including VAX VMS, RSX-11M and the Windows NT operating system and kernel, which has been the core of Windows operating systems ever since.

Lee Felsenstein was the lead designer for the Osborne-1 and SOL-20 microcomputers as well as leading the influential Homebrew Computer Club of Palo Alto, California. He also was a founding member of the Berkeley-California based Community Memory project, one of the earliest electronic bulletin board systems.

Phil Moorby designed the Verilog hardware description language, a way of describing hardware devices through software. Verilog has enabled the design, simulation and testing of the complex, multi-billion transistor integrated circuits we use every day.

"This year's Fellows have made groundbreaking contributions," said Dag Spicer, Museum senior curator. "Dave Cutler has been a key developer and manager of several powerful and widely influential operating systems; Felsenstein designed important early microcomputer systems and led the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley; and Phil Moorby is the inventor of the Verilog hardware description language, used in designing nearly all modern integrated circuits. We are delighted to be honoring their efforts this year."

The Computer History Museum Fellow Awards honor exceptional men and women whose contributions to the field of computing—in areas such as hardware, software, storage, programming languages, and networking—have changed the world. The Fellow Awards are part of the Museum's vision to explore the computing revolution and its impact on the human experience. The tradition began in 1987 with the Museum's first Fellow, early programming pioneer Grace Murray Hopper, and has grown to a distinguished group of 70 members. The Museum is proud to further celebrate and share the stories of its Fellows by conducting interviews with new inductees that become a permanent part of the Museum's oral history collection.

Fellow nominations are open to the public and reflect a diverse range of viewpoints and areas of computing. Final selections are made by a panel of historians, researchers, industry leaders, Museum staff, and past Museum Fellows.

For more information about the 2016 Fellow Awards click here.
 
About the Computer History Museum

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, is a nonprofit organization with a four-decade history as the world's leading institution exploring the history of computing and its ongoing impact on society. The Museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computer history and is home to the largest international collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, documentation, ephemera, photographs, and moving images.

The Museum brings computer history to life through large-scale exhibits, an acclaimed speaker series, a dynamic website, docent-led tours, and an award-winning education program. The Museum's signature exhibition is "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing," described by USA Today as "the Valley's answer to the Smithsonian." Other current exhibits include "Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2," "IBM 1401 Demo Lab," "PDP-1 Demo Lab," and "Where To? A History of Autonomous Vehicles." For more information and updates, call (650) 810-1059, visit www.computerhistory.org, check us out on Facebook, follow @computerhistory on Twitter, and read the Museum blog @chm.


            

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