A Storage Pioneer Passes On: A Belated Tribute

A bit over a week ago I told you about the centennial anniversary of the birth of a now-deceased computer industry pioneer. Now I have the unfortunate task of informing you of another legend's passing, also a bit over a week ago. If it's true that HDDs' plummeting cost-per-GByte is analogous to semiconductors' decreasing cost trends, then Al Shugart was the hard drive industry's counterpart to Gordon Moore. I say was because Al passed away last Tuesday of complications from six-week-earlier heart bypass surgery, at 76 years old.

The obituary that ran in last Sunday's Sacramento Bee referred to Shugart as the 'computer disk king', and it's an apt title. He ran the design team that invented IBM's first hard drives, which I mentioned in my January writeup linked to in the above paragraph, and floppy drives. In 1979 he founded Seagate, now the world's largest drive manufacturer. And in 1998 he founded a venture and consulting firm, Al Shugart International, which (according to the obituary I saw) invested in more than a dozen technology companies. A passionate and tireless worker, he apparently he made phone calls on the way to the hospital, to companies he was advising. And he had unique clothing (and hairstyle) fashion tastes, to boot!

This holiday season, while you're enjoying the burgeoning capacities and plummeting prices of the HDDs you're buying and filling up, take a moment and remember the man who was notably responsible for your bounty. Surf's up, dude, thanks for all the megabytes.

More tributes come from Om Malik and Robert Scoble.