In 1959, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Control Systems Laboratory set out to develop a computerized learning system. They hired Don Bitzer, who’d just earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the school.

Bitzer accomplished what a committee could not, and the result was Program Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, or PLATO. The system was jam-packed with content, including tens of thousands of hours of course materials, Star Trek-inspired games, and a message board that constituted an early online community. The hardware, initially based on the ILLIAC I computer, was equally groundbreaking: PLATO was one of the first computers to combine a touchscreen with graphics, and it was an early example of timesharing — an innovation University of Illinois might’ve earned a patent for, had the paperwork not been misfiled.

In 1964, the PLATO IV model debuted another innovation: the flat-panel plasma display. This alternative to traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays, invented by Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson, rippled far beyond academic computers: decades later, it became the basis for flatscreen, high-definition televisions, used in computers and entertainment worldwide. For this work, Bitzer received a 2002 Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.

In 1989, Bitzer joined the faculty of NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he remained until retirement. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013, the National Academy of Inventors in 2018, and as a fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2022.

“He was a rare systems-level individual who could easily move between hardware and software, and wrangled both sets of people, all while evangelizing the entire PLATO platform to any individual or organization who would listen,” said Thom Cherryhomes, creator of IRATA.ONLINE, a modern online community based on the PLATO system.

Bitzer was 90 when he died at home.