Present at the creation -- a cyber tour

BOSTON -- Some of the names, such as Tim Berners-Lee and Bill Gates, are well-known even beyond the technology world. But what about Richard Hamming, the man responsible for the data stream error-correction utility that transformed temperamental mainframes into reliable tools? Without Hamming's contribution, the modern PC wouldn't work.

Now Hamming and others like him are getting their due. They share a place of honor with nearly 200 other inventors, entrepreneurs, and original thinkers profiled in the "Wizards and their Wonders" exhibit opening Saturday at The Computer Museum here.

The exhibit features photographs of computing industry visionaries taken by portrait photographer Louis Fabian Bachrach, along with artifacts such as the first device ever to feature a microprocessor chip -- a Japanese calculator -- and Berners-Lee's original paper detailing plans for the World Wide Web.

The exhibit is the brainchild of Gwen Bell, founding president and director of collections at The Computer Museum, who commissioned Bachrach to take the photos because she felt the museum -- the only one of its kind in the U.S. -- didn't give visitors enough details on the people behind the wonders of technology.

(Hear Gwen Bell, talking about the museum's Apple I, the first Apple computer, designed in a garage by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Only a handful remain in existence.)

"These are not only the people who brought us the inventions that make computing work, they've also brought us a whole new creative environment," Bell said.

Bachrach said it took nearly two years of trips around the world to take the photographs of visionaries such as Whitfield Diffie, the inventor of public key cryptography; MIT professor Sherry Turkle; Atari founder Nolan Bushnell; and Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse. (He logged more than 150,000 frequent-flier miles during the project.)

(Listen as Louis Fabian Bachrach, the photographer behind the nearly 200 photographs in the exhibit, talks about what he had to do to get Bill Gates to sit still long enough to get his shot.)

"Sometimes you get the best photos when you're under pressure," said Bachrach, recalling how he spent nearly a week chasing Microsoft Corp. CEO Gates before he finally agreed to sit for the portrait. The picture, taken with only a few minutes of preparation, is one of Bachrach's favorites in the exhibit.

The photos reflect the personalities of their subjects. Intuit Inc. CEO Scott Cook sits bare-legged in a casual shirt and shorts, while Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison is elegantly dressed, right down to the cuff links.

It was nearly impossible in many cases to decide which pieces of information to leave out of the biographical profiles accompanying the photos, said Christopher Morgan, a member of the museum's board of directors and former communications vice president at Lotus Development Corp. Morgan wrote the profiles for the exhibit and the companion book by the same title which will be available next month.

The exhibit, which will run for six months, is being sponsored by Goldman Sachs & Co., which donated $50,000 for its funding, said Oliver Strimpel, executive director of the museum. The Association for Computing Machinery helped underwrite the cost of producing the "Wizards and their Wonders" book. Altogether, the book and exhibit have cost about $150,000 to produce, Strimpel said.