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Born
Alan Kotok was born November 9th 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, he was raised in Vineland New Jersey. -
Begin at MIT
Begins at MIT at age 16 after skipping 2 grades at Vineland High School. -
Joins TMRC
Kotok joins the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and meets other members such as Peter Samson, Robert A Saunders, David Gross, and Robert A Wagner. -
MIT's first programming course
In spring takes MIT’s first ever course in programming taught by John McCarthy. -
Work begins on Kotok-McCarthy chess program
Several students, Kotok included, begin working on McCarthy’s IBM 704 chess program. This would be the first computer program to convincingly play chess. -
Dec Debugging Tape (DDT)
Writes the Dec Debugging Tape (DDT) program, a legendary achievement. -
PDP-1 Arrives at MIT
DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) donates the new PDP-1 to MIT and Kotok along with other members of the TMRC work as support staff programming the new computer. -
DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)
Kotok is Hired at DEC after graduating from MIT and would go on to work there for 34 years. -
Spacewar!
Kotok and Saunders create the first game controllers for the PDP-1 that allowed Spacewar! to be played by two people sitting next to each other. -
Challenge from Moscow
McCarthy, now at Stanford, visits the Soviet Union, and has his Kotok-McCarthy chess program challenged to a match by a program from a group at the Moscow Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP). -
Kotok-McCarthy vs Moscow ITEP
From 1966 till 1967 over the course of 9 months the chess match between the Kotok-McCarthy program and Moscow's ITEP program is played out by telegraph. The Kotok-McCarthy program loses 3-1. -
Clark MBA
From Clark University Kotok receives an MBA. -
W3C
Kotok helps to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). -
Retires from DEC
Kotok retires from DEC after 34 years with the company. -
Birds of a Feather
Kotok becomes the associate chairman of the W3C after spearheading the “birds of a feather meeting”, held at the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW6), on Selection of Payment Vehicle for Internet Purchases. During which he presented Micropayment Systems to the Electronic Payments forum. -
Computer History Museum
At the Computer History Museum, Kotok records an oral history. -
Passes
On May 26th 2006 Alan Kotok passes from a heart attack, only six months after his wife had passed during her cancer treatment.
