Mark Dean is an American inventor and computer engineer who was born on March 2nd, 1957 in Jefferson City Tennessee.
Right from an early age, Mark has always shown prowess and genius in engineering that he impressed his white friends and teachers at Jefferson City high school. Dean stated that one of his best friends during the 6th grade told him he couldn’t be black since he was too smart. During his childhood, he and his dad constructed a tractor right from scratch which was quite an amazing site for those who got a chance to see it.
Mark Dean and his co-inventor Dennis Moeller, created a microcomputer system with bus control means for peripheral processing devices.
He has been the first African American To become an IBM fellow which is the highest level of technical excellence at the company.
Dean has been with IBM since 1980. He holds 3 of the original 9 patents on the computer that all pcs are based upon. Soon after joining IBM he now holds over 20 patents.
Dean was part of the team that developed the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) systems bus that enables multiple devices such as modems and printers to be connected to personal computers.
He was inducted into the national inventors’ hall of fame in 1997 and in 2001 he was elected to join the national academy of engineers.
Dean came up with the idea for a rugged, magazine-sized device that could download any electronic text, from newspapers to books. The device would also be a DVD player, radio, wireless telephone, and provide access to the Internet. It would recognize handwriting (written directly on the screen), be voice-activated and even talk back.
But while it could accomplish all of those things, Dean thinks the tablet created could be produced cheaply enough so that every student could get one instead of books, and publications could give one to every person who buys a subscription. In one of his most famous quotes he stated. “A lot of kids growing up today aren’t told that you can be whatever you want to be,” he said. “There may be obstacles, but there are no limits.” So for all his tremendous work in the technology industry and to the state of Knox county Tennessee April 25th was declared,” Mark Dean Day.”
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This article was written by Thelma Letasi.
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