Donald Bitzer, a Pioneer of Cyberspace and Plasma Screens, Dies At 90

The Washington Post reports: Years before the internet was created and the first smartphones buzzed to life, an educational platform called PLATO offered a glimpse of the digital world to come. Launched in 1960 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [UIUC], it was the first generalized, computer-based instructional system, and grew into a home for early message boards, emails, chatrooms, instant messaging and multiplayer video games.

The platform's developer, Donald Bitzer, was a handball-playing, magic-loving electrical engineer who opened his computer lab to practically everyone, welcoming contributions from Illinois undergrads as well as teenagers who were still in high school. Dr. Bitzer, who died Dec. 10 at age 90, spent more than two decades working on PLATO, managing its growth and development while also pioneering digital technologies that included the plasma display panel, a forerunner of the ultrathin screens used on today's TVs and tablets. "All of the features you see kids using now, like discussion boards or forums and blogs, started with PLATO," he said during a 2014 return to Illinois, his alma mater. "All of the social networking we take for granted actually started as an educational tool."
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp found another remembrance online. "Ray Ozzie, whose LinkedIn profile dedicates more space to describing his work as a PLATO developer as a UIUC undergrad than it does to his later successes as a creator of Lotus Notes and as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, offers his own heartfelt mini-obit." Ozzie writes: It's difficult to adequately convey how much impact he had on so many, and I implore you to take a few minutes to honor him by reading a bit about him and his contributions. Links below. As an insecure young CS student at UIUC in 1974, Paul Tenczar, working for/with Don, graciously gave me a chance as a jr. systems programmer on the mind-bogglingly forward thinking system known as PLATO. A global, interactive system for learning, collaboration, and community like no other at the time. We were young and in awe of how Don led, inspired, and managed to keep the project alive. I was introverted; shaking; stage fright. Yeah I could code. But how could such a deeply technical engineer assemble such a strong team to execute on such a totally novel and inspirational vision, secure government funding, and yet also demo the product on the Phil Donahue show?

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules." You touched so many of us and shaped who we became and the risks we would take, having an impact well beyond that which you created. You made us think and you made us laugh. I hope we made you proud."

RIP an engineer who invented from no cloth

[ElitistWhiner]

To this day, none of the technologies subsequent to plasma display have come close to the Cinematic ideal that plasma made enjoyable. Sure they’re cheap big imitations anyone can afford - brighter, higher contrast – less tearing — more efficient. BUT if your eyes don’t give out, your mind tires watching after two hrs of uninterrupted viewing, count yourself among the rare few for whom modern TV screens present no headache.

By the grace of Don Bitzer he showed the world what was possible and it’s been a glorious experience for many - thanks to his ideas put into electronics. A true pioneer.

Now if someone could step up and show me the next plasma quality technology that AI can manipulate pleasewhere’s that pioneer

Re:

[timeOday]

No way man. OLED. There's just nothing wrong with it. It's perfect!

Plasma ended up having a really short run, like CFL lightbulbs.

Re: RIP an engineer who invented from no cloth

[RightwingNutjob]

I think I still have a cfl working that I bought 15+ years ago. Things were a victim of their own success.

Plasma displays were indeed beautiful

[localroger]

Unfortunately, they were also expensive and not very durable, burning the phosphors in much faster than even a CRT. That's the main reason you never see them used for cheap like projectors and LCD's.

Plato could have been the World Wide Web.

[GrpA]

Plato had all of the hallmarks of an early World Wide Web. Except that it was too proprietary and that's what killed it.

It the early 80s, it mixed text and graphics, and had a resolution of 512x512 so that you could send vector graphics as small codes down serial modem lines at 1200 baud and it was still viewable. The Star Trek graphic logo you see on some examples is just a glimpse - it was amazing for graphics even at it's time, and people who weren't around at the time would fail to notice that it occurred at a time when almost all computers were only capable of text display without any detailed graphics like that - even the frame buffer was absolutely unthinkable for it's era, and high end business PCs sometimes struggled with things like 160x75 resolution graphics.

And it was FAST - Way faster than early web services which didn't come out for well over another decade.

Not only was it multi-user, but through it's programming language, called TUTOR, you could have multiuser chats going on, or monitor an entire classroom of remote students, see what they were seeing, break in and help them, and assist with their lesson directly, then hand them back to whatever they were doing at the time, no matter who wrote the lesson.

I wrote somelike like IRC (relay chat) for it - using the capability to cause a predetermined error in a users input that would flush their input buffer to common memory, allowing my program with minimal permissions to capture their buffer, and display it on everyone's screen before repeating - Up to six people could share in real-time chat. It wasn't just popular - it spawned an entire group of users who just wanted to talk to each other via the screen, especially as the built-in chat had been disabled to prevent use as a conversational capability for users.

Unfortunately, my program went absolutely viral and usage eclipsed every other application. I'm told use of the chat program I wrote consumed over 99% of system resources, because, strangely enough, people just wanted to talk to each other ( this was localized to institutions in a single state - not other PLATO networks ) which led them to shut down the system as they felt it wasn't being used for educational purposes, which tells you something about the mindset of the people who operated the pilot PLATO network in my state. They should have embraced the viral popularity of the free chat program I wrote and used it to fuel interest in the other capabilities the system had to offer. But, well, the virus that affects academia of late was already well set in place even back in the early 80s. The system admins loved my work, but the powers that be had an agenda, and apparently I interfered with it.

What happened? Who knows exactly, but Plato was shut down and I was kicked out of the university for failing to get any marks in my courses ( A big ZERO ). I already had enough points to pass my bachelor's degree units at the time, and somehow they all disappeared. The first time it happened, I had a copy and went into the university admin office and the administrative staff fixed it. The second time it happened was before they sent me a copy of my current course marks, and I was kicked out. Coincidence perhaps? Not very likely. It had all the hallmarks of malicious activity although I had upset other educators at the time by correcting them in class so it's not impossible for it to be related to other matters. I guess I never learnt to keep my head down and universities don't like students who stick out.

But the idea of embedding vector graphics and text along with touch screens and an advanced multiuser learning environment was amazing at the time. This was well before most computers could show photographic images on-screen. PLATO was incredible. A harbinger of where the Internet was going to go in the near future and what it would become.

CMU Prof Wanted PLATO Functionality for '94 WWW

[theodp]

Calling for a universal network graphics language [ucalgary.ca] for the nascent Web in 1994 (those cc'd included Guido van Rossum), CMU CS Prof Daniel Sleator wrote: "I believe that the development of such a set of tools would spur a tremendous explosion of new simple graphics games and applications that could run through telnet the way the chess server does now. It would be possible for one person to write a new game (such as double bughouse chess) without having to write a half dozen graphics interfaces. Many really

Seemed like a happy guy

[plate_o_shrimp]

He was a professor at NSCU when I was there. I never really said much more that "Hello, Dr. Bitzer" to him but I would see him walking down the halls of Daniels Hall (the EE building), or in the gym, and he always seemed happy & care-free. RIP, Dr. Bitzer.

Then and now

[Waffle Iron]

Comparing PLATO to today's systems exemplifies the old quote "Software is a gas: It expands to fill its container".

I used a PLATO system during the last couple of years that it still ran on an old CDC Cyber mainframe (which the university was barely able to keep stringing along with spare parts getting scarce).

PLATO usually ran relatively smoothly with up to 400 people simultaneously logged in to interactive sessions via serial links. At any given moment, they were all sharing a single processing unit with