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Comment by gcek9 | Hacker News Reader

> "The pioneers of personal computers including Jobs, Kapor, Lampson, Roberts, Kaye, are all great people but I don’t think any of us will merit an entry in a history book."

I don't think that will prove true for Mr. Gates or Mr. Jobs.

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The list is interesting. Jobs or Gates, of course. Lampson, HNers will probably know from his important CS research such as on distributed systems - he'll be mentioned in those sort of history books, although not generalized ones. Kapor: I have to think for a while before I can finally pin him as 'Mitch Kapor, inventor of the spreadsheet'. Extremely important to business and economics and the modern world, almost as important as double-entry bookkeeping, but I don't think Luca Pacoli or double-entry books are mentioned in most history books so probably not. 'Kaye', I have no idea, unless it's a typo for '[Alan] Kay', in which case he could well be in the history books. Finally, 'Roberts'; I had no idea and had to ask Google, and apparently he's the Altair guy, Ed Roberts. The Altair doesn't seem all that important so I could see history books skipping over it and him. So of the 6 (including Gates himself), 3 probably would be, 2 will be in more specialized histories, and all would be featured in the most detailed histories or encyclopedias (indeed, all of them have Wikipedia entries).

Kapor designed Lotus 1-2-3 (but didn't program it -- both parts were important for its success). Bricklin and Frankston created the spreadsheet with VisiCalc. There are claims of earlier spreadsheets on bigger computers, which I haven't really looked into.

> but I don't think Luca Pacoli or double-entry books are mentioned in most history books so probably not

They did in mine - important factor for the wealth of the Medicis and the northern Italian city states around the 14th/15th century as well as the Hansa league later on. Though I went to school in a European country so YMMV.

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