Lightning Talks: Histories of Design

UPDATE! This event has moved to Atlantic BT.

They'll have pizza and beer available. We're excited to have them host, and really thankful. :)

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Remember history class where everyone had to write a paper on a person from a particular time period? Well, imagine that, but focusing on designers, presented somewhat like a Lightning Talk. "Design" is a broad subject, and could pertain to a lot of things. Architecture, CSS, Manufacturing, Print, City planning, Pencils! Try listening to a few episodes of 99% Invisible to get warmed up, then hit the library to learn more about who designed your favorite things!

Suggested Topics . . .

WWW
The World Wide Web has done a particularly poor job of keeping track of its historical moments. Many are locked away in peoples' memories. You could focus on the life of a particular designer through their blogs, archive.org, and really just by Surfing The Web — your favorite thing to do anyway.

https://archive.org/web/ might be useful.

Print
Gutenberg wasn't the only important person in print history. Not even close! Who invented CMYK? Who invented silkscreens? Who invented PostScript .. and why would they do such a thing? I don't know the answers to these questions, but about 15 minutes from now you might, and then you can tell everyone about it!

Computer Graphics
A long trail of computer graphics history awaits your discovery in the forms of whitepapers written by huddles of PhDs at MIT and Utah. (my personal favorite) If you're stuck finding juicy WWW or Print material, there's plenty to talk about in the world of CG. More than you could ever want...
Use http://www.siggraph.org to get started.

...And Beyond!
How come Javascript was designed without classes? Why are screens rectangular? How come Japanese versions of albums end up with more songs than their western counterparts? Who invented the soda can?

As long as you can cram it into roughly 5-10 minutes, bring it on.