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Birth
On November 9th, 1941, Alan Kotok was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. -
Began Attending MIT
In the Fall of 1958, Kotok began attending MIT. He shortly joined the Tech Model Railroad Club during the beginning of his freshman year. -
Student Staff Programmer at MIT's Research Laboratory for Electronics
DEC donated a PDP-1 to the lab in September 1961. The hackers of TRMC caught wind of the information and applied to be student staff programmers. Kotok was one of the six who were selected. -
Spacewar! Game Controllers
Kotok and Robert Saunders work together to build a controller for Spacewar!. The two created the first video game controllers that two players could use when playing side-by-side. -
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Kotok's Reign In DEC
During his time at DEC, Kotok held the positions of chief architect of PDP-10 computers and senior engineer for multiple DEC organizations. -
Kotok-McCarthy Chess Playing Program
In June 1962, Kotok submits his papers that cover his development of a chess playing program on the IBM 7090.
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/17406/33316111-MIT.pdf?sequence=2 -
Sine-cosine Routine
Kotok helps Steve Russell by acquiring sine and cosine routines from DEC that will later help when creating the codes for Spacewar!.
http://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/607a6b03406ff7659f9d1965dbf28027/ -
DEC Debugging Tape
Learning from the FLIT debugging program, Kotok improves the idea and creates the DDT which allowed hackers to examine what was wrong with the program while still using the program.
http://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/189cc577e7b13aafbb0efab4c547d262/
http://s3data.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/DEC.pdp_1.1964.102650078.pdf -
Logic Designer for DEC's PDP-6
Kotok played a key role in the development of PDP-6 while working in DEC. During the project he held the position of the Logic Designer. -
Finishes His Education at MIT
Kotok received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1962 and his Master of Science in Electircal Engineering in 1965. -
Senior Consultant to Digital's Alta Vista project
Kotok was placed in charge of DEC's Alta Vista project whish was an early development of a search engine. -
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Kotok joins the World Wide Web Consortium Board
Kotok joins the W3C board as an associate chairman in 1997 and held his position until he passed away. -
Publishes First Book
In June 1997, Kotok publishes his first book with Ralph Lyman called Print Communication and the Electronic Media Challenge. -
PDP 1 Restoration
After restoring the PDP-1 computer, Kotok and his old friends from TRMC gather to talk about the importance of the development of the PDP-1 computer at the Computer History Museum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8zU8WQO-PY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHTa3EfzrNE -
Death
On May 26th, 2006 Alan Kotok died at the age of 64.
