While the death of Steve Jobs attracted the most attention, other people died who played fundamental roles in building the world we now live in. The fact that they are almost completely unknown suggests something about the large number of people who make fundamental contributions to technology--it's not just a few people. Dennis Ritchie was one of the two people most responsible for developing the Unix operating system. Unix is the basis for the operating systems on Apple computers, on Android cell phones; it is also the basis for Linux. Ritchie is at least known among computer scientists, while Keith Tantlinger is almost completely unknown. Tantinger worked on making containers and container ships viable vehicles for shipping goods. His specific contribution was a locking mechanism that locked containers to each other and which could be locked or unlocked by a crane operator. It may not sound very glamorous, but our technological world depends on seemingly small, but important innovations like Tantingler's.
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