Published: September 11, 2026
Here, we honor the lives, careers, and lasting legacies of six trailblazing innovators whose contributions continue to influence the work of electronics engineers, embedded developers, and hardware makers today.
If you have ever connected an embedded device to a local network, you owe a debt of gratitude to Franklin "Frank" Kuo, who passed away at the age of 91. Kuo was the co-developer of ALOHAnet, a revolutionary communication system developed at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Debuting in 1971, ALOHAnet was the world's very first public demonstration of a wireless packet data network.
