He showed a lot of promise while growing up with a lot of interest in creating his own inventions. At a tender age, he built a tractor from ground zero with the assistance of his father, who was a supervisor at the Tennessee Valley Authority.
He was gifted in many aspects of academics and on the field as an athlete. At Jefferson City High School, he graduated with straight A’s. He came up on top of his class at the University of Tennessee in 1979 where he studied engineering, as reported by Biography.
Today, Dr. Mark Dean, a computer scientist and engineer, is credited with inventing revolutionary technologies that changed the face of how computers operate and are utilized in many workplaces and homes.
He co-invented the personal computer monitor, the Industry Standard Architecture system bus which allows for computer plug-ins such as disk drives and printers and the first gigahertz chip, which fast-tracks the speed of processing data in computers.
He has at least three of IBM’s patents out of the company’s original nine patents but has more than 20 patents linked with his name. If computers are handier and work at great speed, Dean was instrumental in getting the personal computer age to where it is today.
He was born on March 2, 1957, in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He got a job at IBM shortly after he completed college. He showed a lot of promise like his childhood days a few months after his employment at IBM.
Dean built the new Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) systems bus with his workmate, Dennis Moeller. This technology enabled peripheral devices such as disk drivers, printers and monitors to be hooked directly into computers. It facilitated the integration and effectiveness of computers.
His research at IBM transformed the accessibility and power of the personal computer. His groundbreaking work in 1999 led to the invention of the color personal computer monitor. He later led a team of engineers to build the first gigahertz chip which is able to do a billion calculations a second.
He had a knack for higher learning despite his accomplishments. He returned to the classroom to pursue his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Florida Atlantic University in 1982. A decade later, he went to Stanford University to do his doctorate degree in electrical engineering.
In 1996, IBM acknowledged him as one of their fellows, the first to be earned by an African American. He was also given the Black Engineer of the Year President’s Award and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He was made a member of the National Academy of Engineers in 2001.
He is reported to have indicated that children should be told they could be whatever they dream of becoming despite the challenges they may face.
