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 ...

By Michael S. Rosenwald Donald Bitzer, an electrical engineer whose groundbreaking computer system PLATO, developed in the 1960s and ’70s at the University of Illinois, was a telegram from the ...

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 ...