Donald Bitzer, unsung pioneer of interactive computing, dies at 90

Donald Bitzer, an electrical engineer whose groundbreaking computer system PLATO, developed in the 1960s and ’70s at the University of Illinois, was a telegram from the digital future that combined instant messaging, email, chat rooms and gaming on flat-screen plasma displays, died on December 10 at his home in Cary, North Carolina. He was 90.