Alternatively why not Seymour Cray instead of the Cray-1?
Or why not use one side for the inventor and the other side for the invention?
Jobs sitting there in an empty field just throws the whole set for me.
For completeness, mobike refrigeration is for Minnesota and Dr. Normal Bourlag is for Iowa
Bourlag's work directly saved millions of lives. Out of those mentioned so far, he's one that truly deserves more name recognition.
You can of course debate which is better and there are hundreds of other choices that could be put on either coin - both humans and inventions. I would probably pick different things (not people) for both - but this is a reflection of my biases and not some universal truth.
Why it is a CEO? Why Jobs and Edison?
It is just how it is...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/03/business/trump-coin-treas...
[...] the law specifically says “no head and shoulders portrait or bust of any person, living or dead, and no portrait of a living person may be included in the design on the reverse of any coin “created to mark the US anniversary”.
The proposed design features a wider illustration of Trump on the reverse side, a move that legal experts said would fall outside the ban on a “head and shoulders portrait or bust”.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/03/trump-coin-t...
The KKK was founded in Pulaski, TN, which is about an hour from where I was raised. It wasn't until July, 2021 that the bust of the founder of the KKK (Nathan Bedford Forrest) was removed from the state capitol building. It's now been relocated to the 'TN State Museum' which was magically opened mere days after the bust was removed.
I could provide countless more examples of things I have heard, read, and witnessed, but I am certain you do not need any more examples, and honestly, even thinking about it all really depresses me.
(Elvis is also from Mississippi, btw)
It's like carving away all of the marble that doesn't look like David.
Neal Stephenson wrote a really great Substack about art and how it's the end product of many small decisions. That's exactly what Jobs did on the hardware he worked on.
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/idea-having-is-not-art
That's an achievement.
Anyway, at least I'm happy the Nobel prize committee isn't based in the US. Otherwise we'd soon see the Nobel prize for advertising.
I'm thinking Elizabeth Holmes should either be on a coin or get some kind of Nobel.
(he said in jest)
But seriously, Lee de Forest (Iowa or New York), Chester Carlson (Washington, New York), Charles Martin Hall (Ohio), Philo Farnsworth (Utah)…
"So, meanwhile, Steve’s friend Wozniak comes in the evenings. He would be out there during burn-in tests while these Tank games were on the production line, and he’d play Tank forever. I didn’t think much of it; I didn’t care. He was a cool guy.
I found that what really had happened was that Jobs never designed a lick of anything in his life. He had Woz do it [redesign Breakout].
Woz did it in like 72 hours nonstop and all in his head. He got it down to 20 or 30 ICs [integrated circuits]. It was remarkable… a tour de force.
It was so minimized, though, that nobody else could build it. Nobody could understand what Woz did but Woz. It was this brilliant piece of engineering, but it was just unproduceable. So the game sat around and languished in the lab."