eWeek posted a story about 17 important computer-industry leaders who passed away this year. Here's a bit (or perhaps byte):

The computing industry came of age in the 1950s, and many of the individuals who laid the groundwork for modern computing, smart electronics and the Internet are now in their 80s. Many of the leaders who passed away in 2011 were founders and chief executives who transformed their companies to take advantage of emerging technology. Several worked on the theoretical foundations in the fields of optics, mathematics and cryptography.

Some of the notable names on the list:

• Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and CEO
• Jack Goldman, founder of Xerox PARC, which inspired Jobs to create Mac OS. Xerox PARC also developed Ethernet and the laser printer
• Dennis Ritchie, co-inventor of Unix and creator of the C programming language, Bell Labs
• Kenneth Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), the dominant mini-computer company from the 1960s to the 1980s
• John McCarthy, "Father of artificial intelligence," inventor of LISP programming language used in AI
• Julius Blank, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor, which developed the first commercially viable silicon integrated circuits in the late 1950's
• Jack Wolf, mathematician, computer theorist who refined the concept of using 0s and 1s in binary for computers
• Betty Jean Jennings Bartik, one of the six programmers of the first all-digital computer, the ENIAC in 1946, and one of the first women to work in computer science.

Bartik is one of lessor know names in computer history. This video starts with old footage of about ENIAC, including a clip of Bartik programming the computer, followed by a recent interview with Bartik.