User:MTibbett/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Russell Kirsch

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article to evaluate because it is related to a research project I am doing in another class, and because it ties in to the history of computing and to the history of photography. Russell Kirsch was the lead engineer on a project to create the earliest digital camera. They utilized the SEAC computer and a scanner to scan an image into the computer's memory, and then later printed the image out, from the computer's memory.

Evaluate the article
The article is fairly short, but outside of Kirsch's involvement with digital images in the 1950s, there wasn't a lot that Kirsch did that was notable. The article covers his education and gives a brief detailing his later life and death date. The article lists his accomplishments in digitization and notes that Kirsch's developments helped NASA with various advancements, as well as medical technology advancement.

The article provides 9 references. The first is a blog post from ImpossibleHQ where the author, Joel Runyon, describes a meeting that he had with Kirsch in Portland. The second is an article from the National Bureau of Standards that describes Kirsch's career. The third is an article from The Oregonian and it discusses Kirsch's specific developments on digitization of photos. The fourth is also from The Oregonian and discusses Kirsch's death. The fifth comes from Wired and discusses Kirsch's invention of the pixel. The sixth is a scan of Computer Development at the National Bureau of Standards by Kirsch describing some of SEAC's accomplishments. The seventh is another article from the National Bureau of Standards describing image processing on SEAC. The eighth is an article from NIST.gov marking the fiftieth anniversary of the first digital image produced by Kirsch. The last article is a direct link to Kirsch's obituary.

Based on the references in the article, I would be dismissive of the blog post. However, the other sources referenced are sound and come from reputable newspapers, tech sites, and directly from government webpages.