Branimir Makanec was a pioneer of computer popularization in Croatia.

In 1968, Makanec established the Multimedia Center of the Zagreb University Referral Center (MMC). The MMC was an open type computer center intended to be used for non-numerical purposes. The MMC was equipped with a Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...

 HP2000 Time-Sharing

Time-sharing

Time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking. Its introduction in the 1960s, and emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s, represents a major technological shift in the history of computing.By allowing a large...

 BASIC

BASIC

BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....

 System, computer terminals, and TTY

TTY

TTY may stand for:* Teleprinter or Teletypewriter or Teletype Printer, a typewriter paired with an electronic communication channel, used for telecommunications or as a computer terminal....

. The MMC, during nearly twenty years of existence, gave thousands of children and students an opportunity to learn programming and socialise with people of similar interests.

Makanec graduated from the Electrotechnical Faculty in Zagreb

Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

 in 1961.

Establishing a cybernetics group at the university in 1962, he designed a TIOSS (remote self-organizing system) robot prototype that displayed rudimentary AI behaviour like handing out the pamphlets to public.

In 2003, the Croatian Ministry of Education and Science awarded Makanec the lifetime technical achievement award "Faust Vrancic".