It's interesting to know who's behind the technology that we use today. This is a list of key people in the history of technology (for better or worse), along with links to articles where you can read about their impact on our daily lives. This list will never be complete. I add names periodically.

Marc Andreessen was born in New Lisbon, Wisconsin (just 138 miles from the St. Norbert College campus). He studied computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the university. He capitalized on Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the worldwide web by creating Mosaic, the first web browser with a graphical interface. Andreessen went on to found Netscape Communications
     (Articles: Marc Andreessen, NCSA)

Ralph Baer, born in Germany in 1922, moved to America as a young boy. He is credited with starting the video game industry. In the mid 1960s, he created the first game console by developing the early versions of the now popular game, Pong. His company, Sanders Associates (where he worked for almost 30 years), licensed the Brown Box video game console to Magnavox in 1971.

     (Articles: Ralph Baer RHBC The man who invented video games)

Rev Thomas Bayes was a Presbyterian minister and mathemetician in Great Britian in the 1700s. He developed mathematical formulas which are used today in spam filtering.
     (Articles: Thomas Bayes, Bayesian spam filtering)

Tim Berners-Lee was a software consutlant in England. A graduate of Oxford, he wrote the Hyptertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) in 1990, and combined it with the internet to form the worldwide web. There is still debate today on how to spell "worldwide web". Berners-Lee's use of the three-letter abbreviation "www" has caused many (including the AP Stylebook) to incorrectly spell it as three words. But the obvious intent of his invention is to facilitate the worldwide dissemination of information.
     (Articles: Tim Berners-Lee, HTTP, hypertext, worldwide web)

Gary Thuerk was a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp. in the 1970s. He wanted a way to publicize open houses in Los Angeles and San Mateo where DEC's newest computers were unveiled. So on May 3, 1978, he became the world's first spammer by sending an e-mail to all 600 ARPANET members on the west coast.
     (Articles: Gary Thuerk, ARPANET, spam)