Below the Fold

Issue 03 / May 2026

The Makers' Register

A register of builders tied to specific turning points: Apple in 1976, Facebook in 2004, iPhone in 2007, Falcon 9 reuse in 2017, ChatGPT in 2022, and the GPU supply chain underneath it all.

The Newsstand
Technology Review Below The Fold Section M / Makers / May 2026

The deep-reading file

The Makers' Register

A register of builders tied to specific turning points: Apple in 1976, Facebook in 2004, iPhone in 2007, Falcon 9 reuse in 2017, ChatGPT in 2022, and the GPU supply chain underneath it all.

Vol. 1 / Section M

The real invention is the standard everyone else has to design around.

Inventors / Designers / CEOs

Lead feature / Public makers

The Makers Who Designed the Present

Seven profiles in compressed form: personal computing, social media, EVs, orbital launch, retail brokerage, defense autonomy, and accelerated computing.

Apple's 2007 iPhone launch put phone, music player, and web browser behind one multi-touch screen. Facebook's 2006 News Feed changed the homepage from a profile directory into a ranking machine. Nvidia's CUDA gave developers a way to turn GPUs into general-purpose compute.

SpaceX proved orbital-class booster reuse with Falcon 9, while Tesla made over-the-air updates part of the car business. Robinhood pushed commission-free trading onto phones and reported 27.6 million funded customers in April 2026.

OpenAI's ChatGPT launch on Nov. 30, 2022 made natural language a mass interface. Anduril's Lattice shows how defense is absorbing the same software pattern: sensors, models, drones, and operators joined into one command layer.

Read the current technology file
Etched portrait plate of Steve Jobs with abstract personal-computing and product-design marginalia.
01Steve Jobs

1976 / 1984 / 2007

Steve Jobs

Co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne on Apr. 1, 1976; Apple II shipped in 1977 and helped define the consumer microcomputer. Macintosh launched on Jan. 24, 1984 with a graphical interface and mouse as the selling point. Jobs left Apple in 1985, founded NeXT, bought Pixar's computer division from Lucasfilm in 1986, and returned when Apple acquired NeXT in 1997. The second Apple run produced iMac in 1998, iPod in 2001, iTunes Store in 2003, iPhone in 2007, App Store in 2008, and iPad in 2010.

Etched portrait plate of Sam Altman with abstract AI systems, chips, and interface marginalia.
02Sam Altman

YC to OpenAI

Sam Altman

Led Y Combinator after 2014, became OpenAI CEO in 2019, and oversaw ChatGPT's Nov. 30, 2022 public launch. OpenAI announced a $1 billion Microsoft partnership in July 2019 to build AI systems on Azure. ChatGPT launched as a research preview connected to the GPT-3.5 line. GPT-4 followed on Mar. 14, 2023 with text and image input.

Etched portrait plate of Elon Musk with abstract rocket, electric motor, battery, and orbital engineering marginalia.
03Elon Musk

EVs, reuse, orbit

Elon Musk

Tesla scaled Model S and Model 3; SpaceX landed Falcon 9 in 2015 and reused a booster in 2017; Starlink made orbit a broadband network. Model S customer deliveries began on June 22, 2012; Model 3 production started in July 2017. Falcon 9 landed at Landing Zone 1 on Dec. 21, 2015 after delivering 11 satellites to orbit. On Mar. 30, 2017, SpaceX achieved the first reflight of an orbital-class rocket.

Etched portrait plate of Mark Zuckerberg with abstract social graph, interface grid, and immersive room-plan marginalia.
04Mark Zuckerberg

3.56B daily people

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook began at Harvard in 2004; News Feed arrived in 2006; Meta reported 3.56 billion family daily active people for March 2026.

Etched portrait plate of Vlad Tenev with abstract retail finance, chart, phone interface, and market-ledger marginalia.
05Vlad Tenev

27.6M funded customers

Vlad Tenev

Robinhood made zero-commission brokerage phone-native; by April 2026 it reported 27.6 million funded customers.

Etched portrait plate of Palmer Luckey with abstract VR headset, autonomous defense sensor, drone, and command-map marginalia.
06Palmer Luckey

Oculus to Lattice

Palmer Luckey

Oculus sold to Facebook in 2014; Luckey co-founded Anduril in 2017, where Lattice links sensors, drones, and command software.

Etched portrait plate of Jensen Huang with abstract chip wafer, GPU package, circuit, and datacenter marginalia.
07Jensen Huang

1993 / 1999 / 2006

Jensen Huang

Co-founded Nvidia in 1993; the company popularized the GPU in 1999 and launched CUDA in 2006, turning graphics silicon into AI infrastructure.

Four files on the made world

Objects After the Breakthrough

Charcoal product-design study of abstract handheld technology forms, drafting tools, and paper margins.

Design file / Jan. 9, 2007

The Object Had to Feel Inevitable

Apple introduced iPhone as three devices at once: iPod, phone, and internet communicator. The 3.5-inch multi-touch screen made the keyboard software, not hardware; the App Store followed in 2008.

Multi-touch, App Store, glass
Engraved semiconductor plate with wafer forms, circuit traces, and laboratory archive paper.

Hardware file / 1999 to CUDA

The Chip Became a Cultural Engine

Nvidia popularized the GPU in 1999; CUDA arrived in 2006 and let developers use graphics chips for general parallel computing. AI now depends on HBM, packaging, power, and datacenter cooling.

GPU, CUDA, HBM, megawatts
Archival illustration of a camera lens, optical diagrams, sensor fragments, and an anatomical eye study.

AI file / ImageNet, 2009

The Machine Learned to See

ImageNet organized more than 14 million labeled images; AlexNet's 2012 win made deep learning the field's new default. The same pattern now reads pallets, tumors, traffic lanes, and faces.

Datasets, labels, cameras
Old-print illustration of translucent interface panes merging with room plans, desk light, and screen geometry.

Interface file / 2006-2022

The Interface Became a Room We Live In

Facebook's News Feed launched in 2006, the App Store in 2008, Robinhood's app in 2015, ChatGPT in 2022. The interface became the market, the media channel, and the command line.

Feeds, apps, prompts

Fact line: 1976 Apple, 1993 Nvidia, 2004 Facebook, 2007 iPhone, 2014 Oculus deal, 2017 Falcon 9 reflight, 2022 ChatGPT.

Scale line: Meta reported 3.56 billion family daily active people in March 2026; Robinhood reported 27.6 million funded customers in April 2026.

Why it matters: Each slot marks a standard: graphical desktop, social feed, reusable launch, prompt box, retail trading app, defense OS, GPU compute.