Wednesday November 13, 2019 AT 6:30PM - 8PM. Busboys and Poets, 450 K St, Giovanni Room, Washington, DC 20001. IBM, the CIA, and the Cold War Conspiracy to Shut Down Production of the World's First Desktop Computer. Booktalk, By Meryle Secrest, Award-winning Author and recipient of Presidential National Humanities Medal.
Prof. Mario Tchou was a brilliant young faculty member at Columbia, the son of Chinese diplomats who grew up in Rome. He was already carving a solid reputation as a leader in pioneering technological research when in 1961, he was killed in a car crash under mysterious circumstances on an Italian superhighway. He was the director of Olivetti's electronics division at the time, and that may have had something to do with it.
