Atsushi Akera

Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

email: akeraa@rpi.edu

Atsushi Akera is a Historian of Technology and an Assistant Professor in the STS Department at Rensselaer .  His primary research focus is on the social and institutional history of the Cold War.  His publications include “IBM’s Adaptation to Cold War Markets,” Business History Review 76(2002): 767-802 and “Voluntarism and the Fruits of Collaboration: The IBM User Group, Share,” Technology and Culture 42 (2002):710-736. In his current project, Calculating a Natural World: Computers, Scientists and Engineers During the Rise of US Cold War Research, he is using the history of computing as a metonymic device by which to describe broad-based changes in the US infrastructure for scientific and engineering research.  Dr. Akera received his Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania in August of 1998.  Prior to his graduate studies, he worked as a foreign technology analyst for the US computer research consortium, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in Austin , TX .

http://www.rpi.edu/~akeraa

Gerard Alberts

Instiute for Science and Society, Radboud University , Nijmegen (The Netherlands )

email: G.Alberts@WenS.ru.nl

Gerard Alberts is the head of the Science and Society Program at Radboud University , Nijmegen , and teaches the History of Computing and the History of Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam .  His key research interests are the history of software and the history of computing in The Netherlands. His expertise in history of software ranges from the prehistory in numerical analysis to software engineering. He maintains a keen interest in history of professionalization and in the meta-historical question of software as archival and museum object. His current projects include the preparation of a biography of Aad van Wijngaarden, founding father of Computer Science in The Netherlands, best known for his authorship of ALGOL 68. Further work is on the sounds of computers in the 1950's. Early computers were equipped with contraptions which might be called "auditory monitors". Studying these provides insight in the practice of automated computing. These sounds have been the theme of a scholarship at the Deutsches Museum , Munich , winter semester 2004.  Gerard Alberts is also working on a textbook on Dutch computer pioneers in the 1950s.

David. K. Allison

Division of Information Technology & Communications, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

email: allisond@si.edu

David Allison just completed directing the new exhibition: "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War," which opened on November 11, 2004. The 18,000 sq. ft. display surveys the history of the American military from the French and Indian War to the Present. Following this effort, Allison returned to leading the Museum's (recently renamed) Division of Information Technology and Communications. It includes collections in the areas of digital computing, mathematics, electricity, photography, graphic arts, printing, and numismatics.  His current research centers on the history of invention and enterprise as represented in many collections in the museum--in preparation for a future exhibition on this topic.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/about/dept-detail.cfm?deptkey=40

David Anderson

The History of Computing Group, University of Portsmouth ( U.K. )

email: david.anderson@port.ac.uk

David Anderson is interested in the period 1936-1954. His current preoccupation is the life and work of the topologist and early pioneer of computing M.H.A. Newman. Anderson is engaged at present on the task of digitising Newman's papers and making them available on-line. This is a joint project between St. John's College , Cambridge and the University of Portsmouth . He recently completed a two volume work entitled "The pioneers of computing" with the co-operation of the Science Museum , London who are trying to arrange a suitable publisher.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/andersod/HoC/hoc.php

William Aspray

School of Informatics , Indiana University

email: waspray@indiana.edu

William Aspray and  Atsushi Akera have recently edited “Using History to Teach Computer Science and Related Disciplines” (http://www.cra.org/main/cra.pubs.html#wor).  He is editing with Paul Ceruzzi a book on the commercialization of the Internet and its Impact on American Business.

http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/people/profiles.asp?u=waspray&class=1

Phillip Aumann

Münchener Zentrum für Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte / Deutsches Museum, Munich

email: p.aumann@deutsches-museum.de

Phillip Aumann is interested in the emergence of cybernetics as an academic discipline in the fields of biological and technical cybernetics - as a special form of Computer Science.  He is also interested in the interaction of cybernetic scientists and the public sphere, arguing that Cybernetics profited enormously from social expectations about automation, artificial intelligence.

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo

Bristol Business School

email: bernardo.batiz@uwe.ac.uk

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently involved in a research project, funded by the British Academy ,it deals with the business and technological histories of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in the UK , 1967-2005. This involves archival material as well as patents and oral histories. The ATM is a neglected area of study in the UK and hence a running comparision with developments in the US will be made. Inspired in the Resource Based View of the Frim as well as the work of JoAnne Yates, the project looks at how the ATM moved from being a unique resource and a source of competitive advantage to a threshold resource in retail financial services. Outcomes are expected to shed light on the evolution of financial information for command and control of banks and building societies as well as the emergence of multi-channel delivery strategies.

http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba14.html

Barbara Bonhage

ETH Zurich , Institut für Geschichte, Technikgeschichte, Auf der Mauer 2 (ADM 2), 8092 Zurich

email: barbara.bonhage@history.gess.ethz.ch

Barbara Bonhage is currently involved into a research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, called "Financial- and Supermarkets - online".  Bonhage is in charge of the financial part: On the basis of empirical data, gathered merely in business archives – most of it banks - , she is trying to find out about the relation between social and technological change since 1960. There has been a fast change in everybody’s everyday dealing with financial instruments and services. The change of the consumer society is heavily interlinked with technological change in the banking sector. The work treats these interdependencies.

http://www.tg.ethz.ch/forschung/projektbeschreib/Bonhage/digitalpayment.htm

Grad Burton

Software History Center, a part of the Computer History Museum

email: burtgrad@aol.com

The Software History Center has focused on collecting, preserving and communicating information about the history of the computer software industry. The Center originally concentrated on the history of software companies from the 1950s-1980s with emphasis on mainframe software companies, particularly the entrepreneurs who created and built the companies. In the last year we have shifted our attention to the PC software companies and plan to address minicomputer and midrange computer software companies in 2006. We have held conferences with the industry participants and a number of the leading computer historians to obtain oral histories and conduct workshops. We have edited and posted these transcripts on the CBI website and will post the new ones on the CBI website or the CHM website. We have been actively collecting materials from these industry pioneers and arranging to have them archived at CBI and at CHM. We have been limiting our activities to US-based companies. We are also actively involved in the IT/Corporate Histories Project being conducted by the Computer History Museum and sponsored by the Sloan Foundation based on a grant request submitted by the Charles Babbge Foundation. We have sponsored one research project by Thomas Haigh relating to the role of ADAPSO in the evolution of the software industry and hope to sponsor other projects in the future. Grad and Luanne Johnson co-edited a special issue of the IEEE Annals on The Start of the Softwared Industry in 2002.  He and Paul Ceruzzi are co-editors for another special issue on PC Software planned for the middle of 2006.

http://www.softwarehistory.org/

Martin Campbell-Kelly

Department of Computer Science, Warwick University

email: M.Campbell-Kelly@warwick.ac.uk

Martin Campbell-Kelly recently completed "From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry" (MIT Press, 2003) and the 2nd edition of "Computer: A History of the Information Machine" with Bill Aspray (Westview Press, 2004). He is currently working on the history of usability, software patents, and the early development of computer networks.

http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~mck/

Anders Carlsson

Office for History of Science, Uppsala University

email: anderscson@hotmail.com

Anders Carlsson researches themes in the computer discourse in Sweden in the 1940s and 50s, such as research policy, user cultures (meteorology in particular), debates on automation and cybernetics. This work is carried out partly in cooperation with an emerging group of Scandinavian computer history scholars. He plans to move in the direction of documentation and oral history since there is very little done along those lines in Sweden . His recent papers include "Elektroniska hjärnor" ["Electronic Brains: Debates on Computers, Automation and Engineers, 1955-58", in Swedish] in Sven Widmalm (ed.), Artefakter (2004); "On the Politics of Failure: Perspectives on ’the Mathematics Machine’ in Sweden, 1945-1948” [in English] in Janis Bubenko, John Impagliazzo & Arne Solvberg (eds.), History of Nordic Computing (2005). Anders Carlsson will be residing in the Washington , D.C. area 2005-2009

Paul E. Ceruzzi

Division of Space History, National Air and Space Museum

email: ceruzzip@si.edu

Paul Ceruzzi is presently Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing at the National Air & Space Museum, Washington, DC. Ceruzzi recently published the second edition of A History of Modern Computing (MIT Press. An essay on Moore 's Law and its implications for historians is forthcoming in Technology & Culture, July 2006, pp. 584-593.  He is currently finishing up a book on the Systems Integration Firms located in the Virginia suburbs of Washington , DC , and will be serving as guest editor of a special issue of the Annals on PC software.

http://www.ceruzzi.com

Jonathon Coopersmith

Deptartment of History, Texas A&M University

email: j-coopersmith@tamu.edu

Jonathan Coopersmith is working on a history of the fax machine from the 1840s to the present; one chapter concerns the rise of computer-based faxing and the integration of faxing into the "office of the future." His next project, partially started, concerns the intertwining of pornography and communication technologies. Needless to say, computers play a large part.

James (Jim) W. Cortada

IBM Institute for Business Value

email: jwcorta@us.ibm.com

James Cortada is currently engaged in writing a three volume history of how computers were used in over 40 American industries from the 1950s to the present. He is exploring how various industries discovered the computer, the waves of applications adopted over the half century, and the effects they had on how these industries conducted their work. Called the Digital Hand, volume one focused on manufacturing, transportation and retail industries and was published by Oxford University Press a year ago. Volume two concerns financial, telecommunications, media and entertainment industries and will be published this fall under the same title. He is currently researching and writing volume three which concerns computing in the public sector, such as in governments, schools, and universities.  Volume one was published in 2004, volume two in 2006.

Mary Croarken

University of Warwick

email: mgc@dcs.warwick.ac.uk

Mary Croarken has an ongoing interest in scientific computing (both digital and analogue) in the pre 1950 period with particular focus on the UK . Specific interests in astronomical computing from the 18th century through to the 20th century and table making in the same period. She is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

Deborah Douglas

MIT Museum

email: ddouglas@mit.edu

Deborah Douglas is the Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum which means that among other things she is responsible for a modest but interesting collection of computer-related artifacts. She has a strong interest in Project Whirlwind. Having received a number of random pieces of hardware from the original DEC collection connected with Whirlwind and SAGE, she organized a reunion of Whirlwind "alumni/ae" in 2001 and began experimenting with ways to put the meager archival collections online (Stay tuned, maybe one day it will even happen!). Douglas ' curatorial objectives are to build a repository of artifacts and related archival materials that document computing at MIT. Her goal is not to be a computer museum but rather to gather the resources that will permit researchers to investigate the ways MIT has shaped and is shaped by computers and related technologies. In addition to making these resources available to researchers, she has conducted a number of workshops with classes from MIT and other universities. Graduate students are always welcome and Deborah is open to the possibility of hosting post-doctoral students interested in working with the collection.

http://web.mit.edu/museum

Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan

University of Texas at Austin

email: chris@cs.utexas.edu

Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan is a computer scientist researching/writing the design stories of the early networks (part-time right now). She is a Postel Visiting Research Scholar (ISI/USC), and was on sabbatical at ISI for the fall 2004. She has gone through several archives with networking papers, and was the executive producer of the Turing Lecture for Cerf and Kahn.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~chris/

Paul N. Edwards

School of Information ,  Science, Technology & Society Program, University of Michigan

email: pne@umich.edu

Paul Edwards spent 2003-04 in South Africa , researching the technopolitics of information infrastructure during and after apartheid. The work included interviews with people in the present IT industry as well as numerous former employees of IBM, black and colored as well as white. He and Gabrielle Hecht are working on a joint book about the role of high technology (principally computers and nuclear systems) in the apartheid state, the anti-apartheid movement, and the post-1994 democratic government.  Edwards' first book, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996), explored the relationship between military computing, cognitive psychology, and American politics and culture from World War II through the 1980s. For the last ten years he has been studying the history of computer simulation models in climate science and politics; some of that work appeared in Clark Miller and Paul N. Edwards, eds., Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). He is presently completing a monograph about this, The World in a Machine: Computer Models, Data Networks, and Global Atmospheric Politics, which should appear from MIT Press in 2006. He is always interested in hearing from people who might want to pursue PhD topics in the history, politics, and culture of computing, particularly outside the developed world

http://www.si.umich.edu/~pne/

Caroline Emberson

OU Business School , United Kingdom

email: c.a.emberson@open.ac.uk

Caroline Emberson is a Phd candidate in the Business School . Her thesis title is 'Constructing New Business Relationships? Theory and practice in the co-development of boundary-spanning information systems'. Prior to her post graduate studies, Caroline Emberson was a business systems executive at one of Marks & Spencers' major suppliers, before accepting a Research Fellowship on a project which explored the development of customer-responsive supply chain management. Her interest in the history of computing comes from the theoretical perspective adopted within her Phd, which draws upon Foucault's conceptions of governmentality and Latour's Actor-Network Theory, to produce 'a history of the present' : how business relations in the UK Retail sector have developed through inter-organisational information system use.

Nathan Ensmenger

History & Sociology of Science Department, University of Pennsylvania

email: nathanen@sas.upenn.edu

Nathan Ensmenger in the History & Sociology of Science department at  the University of Pennsylvania .  He is currently finishing up a book  on the occupational history of computer programmers and their role in  the politics of corporate computerization efforts.  His next project  will explore the use of computerized decision making tools and  simulation models in science, government, and medicine.

www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen

Slava Gerovitch

Science, Technology and Society Program, MIT

email: slava@mit.edu

Slava Gerovitch is currently working on the history of automation and human-machine interaction in the Soviet space program with specific attention to the use of onboard computers. Gerovitch's book, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (MIT Press, 2002) examined applications of cybernetic and computer models in a variety of scientific fields in the Soviet Union; see http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/newspeak.htm His 2004 course on the history of computing explored how the use of the computer as a scientific instrument changed the conceptual apparatus, sociotechnical infrastructure, laboratory practice, and professional identity of researchers across a wide range of scientific disciplines, from physics to mathematics to biology to linguistics. Course materials can be found on MIT OpenCourseWare; see http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Science--Technology--and-Society/STS-035Spring2004/CourseHome/index.htm

http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage

Katja Girschik

Institute of History , ETH Zurich

email: girschik@history.gess.ethz.ch

Katja Girschik's Ph.D. is part of the research project <Financial- and Supermarkets - online: Digital telecommunications and social change in a local context (1960 - 2000)>. This project focuses on the question how digital telecommunication means were connected with specific local needs and how the evolving ways of utilisation led to social changes. This project is founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) until April 2007. The working title <When the cash registers learnt to read. The digitisation of the supply chain: The case of Swiss retailing, 1960 - 2000> indicates the direction of her dissertation: Her research focuses on the digitisation of the merchandise management system during the last forty years considering Swiss retailing as an example. The merchandise management systems have accounted decisively for the fact that today consumers in the western countries regard daily shopping in the supermarkets with its shelves packed with goods as a matter of course. The supply of diverse goods has become highly foreseeable, reliable and therefore unproblematic. However, the act of purchase is dependent on various conditions. Numerous sociotechnical systems have to match accurately in order to guarantee smooth transactions. The viewpoint of history of technology rises at this point the question how such complex coordination efforts are planned, implemented and transferred into stable practices. The problematisation of everyday life allows to look for historic developments which converge for example in the networked cash registers of contemporary retailing: These cash registers became more and more equiped with scanners and reading machines for credit cards, and were linked with accounting-, inventory control- and electronic payments systems. This integration process had far reaching consequences from the organisation of good's replenishment to the retailer's relation to the food industry and the change of job descriptions.

http://www.tg.ethz.ch/forschung/mitarbeiter/KatjaGirschik.htm

David Alan Grier

Center for International Science and Technology Policy Elliott School of International Affairs George Washington University ; Editor in Chief, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

email: grier@gwu.edu

David Alan Grier just finished a book on the people who did computation before we had electronic machines to do it for us. (When Computers were Human, Princeton University Press, 2005).  David writes the column "In our time" for Computer Magazine.  Accordingly, the goal of his major project is

to prepare a portrait of the sixty years of the computer age.  In 2006 the project is tentatively called "When the future was new: Essays for the end of the computer revolution."

Thomas Haigh

University of Wisconsin , Milwaukee & The Haigh Group

email: thaigh@computer.org

Thomas Haigh has two degrees in Computer Science from the University of Manchester and a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Manchester . He is now an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies of the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee . His dissertation “Technology, Information and Power: Administrative Technicians in Corporate America, 1917-2000” is the first general examination of the evolution of the techniques and technologies of administrative information processing within the American corporation. One of these days it will become two books. The first is focused on the big picture rise of technical expertise in administrative systems from office manager to chief information officer over the twentieth century. The second looks in detail at the creation and development of the corporate data processing department from 1945 to 1975, focusing issues of institutional form, practice, and professional identity. Material from this project has already given rise to a number of papers, which can be found at www.tomandmaria.com/tom/writing. His most recent series of publications have been about the structural development of the software and services industry, and its leading trade association ADAPSO, during the 1960s and 70s. For the past two years he has been a consultant to SIAM , the professional association for applied mathematics, and is now concluding a series of twenty oral history career interviews with developers of software packages and libraries for numerical computing. The project is also producing several short articles and biographies, including one on mathematical libraries as the precursor of what would now be called open source development projects. He has an interest in the social history of the personal computer, which has led to several recent conference presentations, some oral history interviews, and a forthcoming article. Eventually that may make a book too. He edits the Biographies department of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and served on the ACM History Committee. He maintains the Computer History Resource File, a guide to key resources in the field, at http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Resources/ResourceFile.htm.

http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom

Matthias Hamm

Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität, München

email: mail@matthias-hamm.de

Matthias Hamm has a degree in Computer Science from LMU. His research interests are the History of Software and Computer Science. He is working on his PhD thesis on Scientific Software Engineering in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ulf Hashagen

Munich Center for History of Science and Technology, Deutsches Museum (Munich, Germany); Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing; International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP); Deputy Head, Presidential Committee for the Hist

email: u.hashagen@deutsches-museum.de

Ulf Hashagen's interests center on the history of scientific computing and applied mathematics in Germany 1900-1970 (http://www.geschichte.uni-freiburg.de/DFG-Geschichte/Hashagen.htm); this project is part of a larger project on the history of the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” and the German research system 1900-1970. Recent Books: - Form, Zahl, Ordnung: Studien zur Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte. Ivo Schneider zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited with M.Folkerts and R. Seising, Stuttgart : Steiner, 2004. - Walther von Dyck (1856-1934): Mathematik, Technik und Wissenschaftsorganisation an der TH München, Stuttgart : Steiner, 2003. - Circa 1903: Wissenschaftliche und technische Artefakte in der Gründungszeit des Deutschen Museums. Edited with O. Blumtritt and H. Trischler, Munich : Deutsches Museum , 2003. - History of Computing: Software Issues. Edited with R. Keil-Slawik and A. Norberg, Heidelberg / New York : Springer, 2002.

http://www.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/wug/gnw/personen_hash.shtml

Marie Hicks

Department of History, Duke University ( Durham , North Carolina )

email: meh20@duke.edu

Marie Hicks is interested in users in the history of computing and in connections between the history of technology, national prestige, labor, and gender. Currently, she is working on her dissertation, which investigates the implementation of computing technologies in British offices from the end of World War II to the 1970s. She is focusing, in particular, on the relationship between the use of office computing technology and women workers to attempt tp achieve higher productivity in the civil service.

http://www.duke.edu/~meh20

Lars Ilshammar

Labour Movement Archives and Library in Stockholm

email: lars.ilshammar@telia.com

Lars Ilshammar is a PhD in Contemporary History (thesis "The New Public Sphere: Technology and Politics in Sweden 1979-1999") at Örebro University , Sweden (http://www.oru.se/templates/oruExtNormal.aspx?id=5881). His research concerns ICT-policy and the transformation of the public sphere in the interaction between technology and politics. Lars was founder, and between 2002 and 2004 manager, of the interdisciplinary DemocrIT Research Programme at Örebro University, focusing on ICT, democracy, citizenship and power. His present research is about the international regulation of medias and communication technology during the 1800s and 1900s (Title: "Trans-national ICT-regimes and the Internet as a New European Public Sphere"). With a background in politics and media, and with assignments for the government (including membership of the Swedish ICT-commission), he has experience with ICT-related policy issues on different levels. Lars has also made frequent appe