The Life and Accomplishments of Alan Kotok

By lukechon
  • Kotok begins attending MIT

    Kotok begins attending MIT

    After skipping two grades in high school, at the age of 16, Kotok began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Kotok along with some classmates, began working IBM 704's chess playing program

    Kotok along with some classmates, began working IBM 704's chess playing program

    Kotok along with classmates Elwyn Berlekamp, Michael Lieberman, Charles Niessen and Wagner, began to develop McCarthy's IBM 704 chess playing program
  • Kotok contributes to Spacewar!

    Kotok contributes to Spacewar!

    Kotok contributes to the creation of Spacewar! by obtaining a sine-cosine routine that Stephen Russell needed

  • Kotok becomes student staff programmer at MIT

    Kotok, along with David Gross, Peter Samson, Robert A. Saunders and Robert A. Wagner, all friends from TMRC, began working with the TX-0 outside of classes
  • Kotok begins working with Digital, writing a Fortran compiler for the PDP-4

    Kotok begins working with Digital, writing a Fortran compiler for the PDP-4

    Kotok makes his first contribution to Digital by writing a Fortran compiler for the PDP-4
  • Kotok earns a bachelor of science in electric engineering from MIT

    Kotok earns a bachelor of science in electric engineering from MIT

    Kotok graduates with a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Kotok helps develop the first commercial time-sharing computer, the PDP-6

    Kotok helps develop the first commercial time-sharing computer, the PDP-6

    Kotok helps develop PDP-6, the first commercial time-sharing computer, by working as an assistant logic designer for the team.

  • Kotok earns a masters in electrical engineering from MIT

    Kotok graduates MIT with a masters in electrical engineering
  • Kotok begins working on PDP-10 as principle architect of the project

    Kotok begins working on PDP-10 as principle architect of the project

    Kotok became the principal architect and designer of several generations of the PDP-10, DECsystem-10 and DECSYSTEM-20

  • Kotok begins teaching logic design at the UC Berkley

    e taught logic design at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1975–1976 academic year

  • Kotok earns master's degree in business administration

    earned a master's degree in business administration from Clark University in 1978
  • Kotok works as system architect for the VAX 8600

    Kotok works as system architect for the VAX 8600

    Kotok helps invent the VAX 8600, which at the time was introduced as the highest-performance computer in Digital's history to date, operating up to 4.2 times faster than the standard at the time
  • Kotok helps with foundation of World Wide Web Consortium

    Kotok helps with foundation of World Wide Web Consortium

    While at Digital, Kotok helped with the foundation of the World Wide Web Consortium

  • Kotok joins World Wide Web Consortium as associate chairman

    His role involved managing contractual relations with W3C hosts and member organizations, coordinating the worldwide W3C Systems and Web Team services to millions of pages and resources on the W3C website, and maintaining the W3C host site at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

  • Kotok meets with other renowned programmers to celebrate the restoration PDP-1

    Edward Fredkin, McCarthy, Russell, Samson, Kotok and Harlan Anderson met in May 2006 for a panel to celebrate the Computer History Museum's restoration of a PDP-1