The Order of Canada gets some hot Java

James Gosling has been named to the Order of Canada for his work on Java. The Canadian computer scientist studied at the University of Calgary before completing his Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon in 1983. He was the primary architect of the programming language Java and wrote the first Java compiler. There are many critics of Java, but there is little question it had a dramatic impact on the networked world.

Travel back in time

As noted in the Globe and Mail Travel section Wednesday, the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford is going to be open this Saturday, 10am to 4pm (and again March 17). While the collection doesn't seem to have many Canadian artifacts, that's no reason to stay away!

It would be worth mentioning that there are many collectors in Canada with similar small museums, though many are not open for unscheduled public visits. There is the York University Computer Museum, aka YUCOM (a research collection which does emphasize Canadian microcomputers and mentioned on this blog before) or Dave Dunfield's remarkable and extensive collection. The Canadian Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa has a large collection of Canadian microcomputers as well.

It would likely surprise many people, but the world's first personal microcomputer, the MCM/70, was invented in Canada around 1972, several years before Apple or the Altair. Research at YUCOM was crucial to bringing this story back to light.