July 24: Max Palevsky

Max Palevsky, a pioneer in personal computing who was a founder of Intel, the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer, was born in Chicago on this date in 1924. Palevsky grew up in poverty with Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents. He used his great fortune to back relatively liberal political candidates such as George McGovern, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Tom Bradley, and Jimmy Carter, and to try to win campaign finance reform so that, as he told Newsweek magazine, “I will never again legally be allowed to write huge checks to . . . political candidates.” He also saved Rolling Stone magazine from bankruptcy in 1970; became a major collector of art (especially from the American Arts and Crafts movement) and financial supporter of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; and produced several films, including Terence Malick’s Badlands (1973) and Ted Kotcheff’s Fun with Dick and Jane (1977). Palevsky died at age 85 in 2010.
“I don’t own a computer. I don’t own a cellphone, I don’t own any electronics. I do own a radio.” —Max Palevsky
Watch an interview with Max Palevsky shortly before his death in 2010 (from the Activist Video Archive):

Max Palevsky from BROGAN DE PAOR on Vimeo.