A tech twist.

• Author: Stewart, Heather Dawn
• Position: From the Editor

One of the long-standing annual articles in Utah Business is our Trailblazers feature, which highlights local companies that have been in business for 50 years or more. Over the years we've profiled companies like The Salt Lake Tribune, Lagoon, O.C. Tanner, Zions Bank and even smaller but beloved companies like Cummings Studio Chocolates and Farr Better Ice Cream. Well, this year we've given the feature a twist--we're shining the spotlight on some of Utah's Tech Trailblazers, individuals who have pushed the frontiers of Utah's technology industry.

Utah's tradition of innovation traces all the way back to the Mormon pioneers. The first group of pioneers tracked the mileage of their trip with a wagon-wheel odometer designed by Orson Pratt. And the state likes to claim the inventor of the television, Utah native Philo T. Farnsworth, who began envisioning designs for a television in while in high school and in 1927 demonstrated the first working model in San Francisco.

The University of Utah was a hotbed of technical innovation in the late 1960s and well into the 1970s. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, helped develop the technology behind 3D computer animation while earning his Ph.D. at the U...