It's Personal

James H. Clark was born on March 23, 1944, in Plainview, Texas, and had a difficult childhood that included an alcoholic father, the divorce of his parents when he was fourteen, and abject poverty thereafter as his mother struggled to support the family. Clark left high school at 16 and spent four years in the U.S. Navy, where he learned electronics. He then attended the University of New Orleans, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in physics, before earning a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah in 1974 — one of the leading institutions in computer graphics research. After completing his Ph.D., Clark worked at NYIT's Computer Graphics Lab, serving as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1974 to 1978, and then as an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University from 1979 to 1982. Clark's research work concerned geometry pipelines, specialized software or hardware that accelerates the display of three-dimensional images. The zenith of his group's advancements was the Geometry Engine, an early hardware accelerator for rendering computer images based on geometric models, which he developed in 1979 with his students at Stanford. As a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur and technology innovator, he founded Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Healtheon, and myCFO — a virtually unmatched record of serial billion-dollar entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley history.

Jim Clark's accomplishments span the full sweep of the digital revolution across two transformative decades. In 1982, Clark along with several Stanford graduate students founded Silicon Graphics. By 1991, Silicon Graphics had become the world leader in the production of Hollywood movie visual effects and 3-D imaging. SGI's technology powered films like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and transformed computer-aided design across aerospace, automotive, and engineering industries. Over 13 years, Silicon Graphics grew to 10,000 employees and more than $4 billion in annual revenues. After departing SGI in 1994, Clark sought out Marc Andreessen, who had led the development of Mosaic, the first widely distributed and easy-to-use software for browsing the World Wide Web. Clark invested $5 million and within months they formed what became Netscape. Within two months of its introduction, Netscape's Web browser, Netscape Navigator, claimed more than 70 percent of the browser market. Netscape generated some $100 million in revenue by 1995 and ultimately reached 75 percent market share in 1996. Clark took Netscape public in an IPO in 1995, which earned an estimated $2 billion return for Clark and became the model for other internet start-ups in the dot-com boom. In 1998, Clark was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to computer graphics.

Jim Clark effectively ignited two separate revolutions in rapid succession. Silicon Graphics revolutionized the design process for everything from bridges to airplanes to special effects for movies. As Clark himself observed, "All of the 3D games you can play on your phone or computer are driven by some kind of a graphics engine that's similar to what I originally did when I was here at Stanford." The SGI workstation, anchored by the Geometry Engine chip, democratized professional 3D visualization for engineers, scientists, and filmmakers, permanently reshaping cinema and industrial design. Netscape's browser software transformed the Internet from an elite domain of technocrats to a vastly important worldwide mass media. One of Netscape's most consequential innovations was the Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL protocol, which enabled encrypted data transmission and made e-commerce possible. Clark also pioneered the Silicon Valley venture capital model that became the hallmark of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, investing in a cadre of start-ups. The Netscape IPO in August 1995 — which saw the stock soar from $28 to close at $58 on its first day — became the founding event of the internet investment era, proving that internet companies could achieve massive valuations before turning a profit and unleashing a flood of venture capital into the online world. Clark's remarkable arc from a high school dropout in rural Texas to the architect of two of technology's most consequential companies remains one of Silicon Valley's most extraordinary stories.

Henry Edward "Ed" Roberts was born on September 13, 1941, in Miami, Florida. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1968 after serving as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. In 1969, he co-founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, or MITS, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, initially producing electronic calculators and telemetry devices for model rocketry enthusiasts. He founded MITS in 1969 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but the first successful product was an electronic calculator kit that was featured on the cover of the November 1971 issue of Popular Electronics. The calculators were very successful and sales topped one million dollars in 1973. A brutal calculator price war left the company deeply in debt by 1974. Roberts then developed the Altair 8800 personal computer using the new Intel 8080 microprocessor. This was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, and hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for this $397 computer kit. Roberts sold MITS to Pertec Computer Corporation in 1977, then returned to medical school, earning his M.D. and becoming a family physician making house calls in rural Georgia — a second career that fulfilled an interest in medicine he had harbored since his teenage years. He died on April 1, 2010, at the age of 68.

Ed Roberts's accomplishments, though concentrated in a relatively brief period, carry an outsized weight in the history of technology. Facing financial challenges in the early 1970s, Roberts pivoted to microcomputers, designing the Altair 8800 — a kit-based system powered by the Intel 8080 microprocessor — that debuted on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975 and sold thousands of units at $397 each. Ed Roberts optimistically told his banker he could sell 800 computers, while in reality they needed to sell 200 over the next year just to break even. When readers got the January issue of Popular Electronics, MITS was flooded with inquiries and orders. In February, MITS received 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800. MITS claimed to have delivered 2,500 Altair 8800s by the end of May. The number was over 5,000 by August 1975. The computer bus designed for the Altair became a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus — the first de facto microcomputer expansion standard. Roberts also had the business instinct to welcome and license software from outside developers, a decision that proved transformative for the industry. The first programming language for the Altair was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC. Upon Roberts's passing, Bill Gates wrote: "Ed was willing to take a chance on us — two young guys interested in computers long before they were commonplace — and the day our first untested software worked on his Altair was the start of a lot of great things."

Ed Roberts's impact on the modern world is staggering in its breadth, especially considering that he described himself as an accidental visionary who simply stumbled upon the idea for a kit computer while trying to survive a collapsing calculator market. The Altair 8800 proved that individuals wanted their own computer, not just a terminal connected to a distant, expensive mainframe. It was the start of personal empowerment through technology. The Altair 8800 quickly fostered a community. Hobbyist clubs like the famous Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley sprung up, where enthusiasts shared ideas, built peripherals, and figured out how to make these machines do more. The chain reaction Roberts set in motion was staggering in scope. The Altair's cover appearance in Popular Electronics inspired Gates and Allen to found Microsoft. At the Homebrew Computer Club, the Altair inspired Steve Wozniak's eureka moment for the Apple I — Wozniak later recalled that seeing the Altair made him feel as if his whole life had been leading to that point, and he immediately began designing what would become the Apple I. The success of the Altair 8800 inspired the creation of countless other microcomputers, including the Commodore PET, the Tandy TRS-80, and the Apple II — machines that helped drive the personal computing revolution, making computers accessible to the masses and paving the way for the digital world we live in today. Roberts remains one of history's most consequential accidental architects of the modern world.