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Latest Additions
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I've been a bit sloppy about keeping this
up to date lately, so here come a number of new drafts at the same time. I
wrote a paper called "Computing the American Way: Contextualizing the US
Computer Industry of the 1950s and 1960s" for presentation at the
"Appropriating America, Making
Europe" Inventing Europe Eurocores European Science Foundation workshop
in Amsterdam in January. This was pre circulated to participants and was
intended particularly for an audience of European historians of computing
with an interest in Americanization but without a strong grounding in US
business or labor history.
Online here.
(23-April-2009)
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There's another workshop paper,
"Masculinities in the Histories of Computing(s)" pre circulated for the
workshop
History|Gender|Computing at the Charles Babbage Institute. It's a rather
rambling paper, intended to stimulate discussion and present perspectives on
the historical use of gender to people with an interest in the history of
computing who are not necessarily trained in social history. Right now I'm
just finishing up a much shorter and reoriented version for the resulting
book, but I thought the original version might also be of interest.
Online here.
(23-April-2009)
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The latest of my publications on the
evolution of the data base management systems is currently under review for
a special issue of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing on the DBMS
industry. Covering the 1950s and 60s it explores some of the same ground as
my earlier "Veritable Bucket of Facts" conference paper but includes a lot
of new archival material on the file management systems of the 1950s and the
work of the SHARE user group in this area. Also a more detailed examination
of the work of the two CODASYL committees active in this area.
Online here
(23-April-2009)
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A half hour interview I did with the local
NPR station was broadcast recently and is now available online for your
listening pleasure. "The Evolution of Computers," UWM Today, May 8
2008.
Online here. (21-May-2008)
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Two biographies from my work with the SIAM
History Project have now been published. The first is of Cleve Moler,
creator of Matlab and co-founder of The
MathWorks. The second is of Jack Dongarra, a leading force behind many
mathematical software packages and supercomputing guru.
"Cleve Moler:
Mathematical Software Pioneer and Creator of Matlab" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 30:1 (January-March
2008), 87-91 is online. "Jack Dongarra:
Supercomputing Expert and Mathematical Software Specialist" IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
30:2 (April-May 2008), 74-81 will follow soon. (21-May-2008)
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My oral histories from the SIAM oral
history project keep trickling onto the web as interviewees get around to
editing and approving transcripts two or three years after the interview.
The latest ones include a
six hour interview
with celebrated Stanford numerical analyst Gene Golub who died recently. See
them all, and more besides, at history.siam.org.
The transcripts should be joining the collection of the
Charles Babbage Institute soon.
(07-Apr-2007)
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I wrote two chapters for the 2008 MIT Press
book
"The Internet and American Business" edited by William Aspray and Paul
Ceruzzi. This era of the Internet's development is currently too old for
journalists but too new for historians -- I hope that the book will begin
the process of putting it into context. The book has not appeared yet, but I
did update my draft versions with some of the minor fixes from the editing
process to share them here. The first one, "Protocols for Profit: Web and
Email Technologies as Product and Infrastructure" tells the business and
technological history of development of Internet web browsing and
email/messaging systems. I focus particularly on the ways in which the
design features built into pre-commercial Internet technologies during the
1980s influenced directions taken by the commercial Internet of the 1990s.
Read a preprint version here.
The second, "The Web's Missing Links: The Search Engine & Portal
Industry" does a similar job for the development of the web navigation
industry. Read a preprint
version here (05-Oct-2007)
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Communications of the ACM published my article "Sources for ACM
History:
What, Where, Why" written with Elisabeth Kaplan and
Carrie Seib of the Charles Babbage
Institute. The paper is an outgrowth of my work with the ACM History
Committee to advise the association on its historical initiatives. Read
the final published version.
(12-June-2007)
Site Highlights
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Interested in the history of computers and computing? Check out my
Computer History Resource File
(now hosted at SIGCIS) a
selection of essential books and websites on the topic, plus links to
relevant course syllabi and articles. This goes with my article,
“The History of Computing: An Introduction for the
Computer Scientist” in Using History to Teach
Computer Science and Related Disciplines ed. Atsushi Akera & William Aspray (Washington, D.C.: Computing
Research Association, 2004):5-26.
(online) You may also want see the syllabus, discussion
questions and on-line resources for my old Colby College course
ST297: Technology and Revolution:
Computers, Culture and the Internet.
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One of my papers, “Inventing Information Systems: The Systems Men and the Computer,
1950-1968” Business History Review 75
(Spring 2001): 15-61 is the first real look at the role of the "systems
men" -- experts in administrative techniques -- as staff managerial
specialists within the
American corporations of the 1950s and 1960s. It examines the emergence of the
modern concepts of information and information systems as political tools
within this history of corporate management, focusing particularly on the
designation of the computer as a tool for management information. The full
text is accessible from my writing page.
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My paper "The Chromium-Plated Tabulator: Institutionalizing an
Electronic Revolution, 1954-1958", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 23
(October-December 2001): 75-104 tells the story of the first four years of
administrative computing in the USA. It is the first in-depth, overall study
of how early administrative computers were brought and sold, what they were
used for, and the new kinds of jobs that emerged around them. It reveals the
extent to which the use of computers was shaped by the earlier technologies of
punched card machines, and draws attention to the importance of the data
processing department as a new corporate institution. This is also accessible
from my writing page.
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“Software in the 1960s as Concept, Service, and
Product",
IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing 24:1 (January-March 2002). (Click
here for the
issue contents page). Chosen as the leading article for a special issue on the
early history of packaged application software, this article surveys the
origins and early ambiguities of the term "software", the origins of packaged
application programs and their relationship to the concerns of data processing
managers. Here it is as published
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"'A Veritable Bucket of Facts:' Origins of the
Data Base Management System," ACM SIGMOD Record 35:2 (June 2006). A
revised and improved version of a previously published conference paper. This is the
first attempt by a professional historian to chart the origins of one of the
most important kinds of software: the data base management system.
(online)
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"Remembering the Office of the Future: Word Processing
and Office Automation before the Personal Computer," IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing 28:4 (October-December 2006):6-31. This
article explores the technical, business, and social history of word
processing during the 1960s and 1970s. It is part of a special issue on the
history of word processing, representing the first sustained historical
examination of this important technology.
Read it online.
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