A sad end to the week: deaths of two computing pioneers

We end the week with the sad news of the deaths of two of computing's unsung pioneers.

On Sunday September 4, Bill Kunkel, known as the Game Doctor, died aged 61. He was the co-founder, in 1981, of Electronic Games magazine, and he worked on it until it shut down in 1985.

The magazine was responsible for introducing the terms 'screenshot' and 'easter egg' into gaming, and Kunkel was even an early advocate of the phrase 'video game'.

In 1985 Electronic Gaming closed among the wreckage of the games industry, but Kunkel continued writing as the Game Doctor and even relaunched the magazine in the 1990s.

Here's a good obituary of Bill Kunkel from 1up.com. You can read more here about his achievements.

On Tuesday September 6, Michael Hart died, aged 64.He was the founder of Project Gutenberg, which was largely responsible for popularising ebooks, making them available for free download for everyone.

The Los Angeles Times obituary of Michael Hart says that he came up with the idea of ebooks in 1971.

It's fair to say that both of these people changed and defined how we think about and use computers.