'Nobel of computing' goes to early PC designer

SAN JOSE, California: A Microsoft Corp. researcher won the US$250,000 Turing Award, one of technology's most coveted prizes, on Tuesday for his work helping design and build what is widely considered the first modern personal computer.

While at Xerox Corp.'s famed Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, in the 1970s, Charles Thacker led the hardware development for the Alto, which featured innovative display and other technologies that helped inspire future generations of computers.