[SIGCIS-Members] Computing, IT and data concepts history at iCHSTM 2013

[Petri Paju]

Dear all,
below is what you should know about most SIGCIS relevant presentations in Manchester this July. (James has trouble sending to the list.)
Best, Petri


From: James Sumner <james.sumner at manchester.ac.uk>
To: members at sigcis.org

Dear SIGCIS friends and colleagues

As many of you know, I'm one of the local organisers for the 24th
International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine
(iCHSTM 2013), to be held in Manchester, UK from Sunday 21 to Sunday 28
July.

SIGCIS has a symposium (group of themed sessions) at the Congress,
organised by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, Miguel Garcia-Sancho and myself, and a
lot of familiar SIGCIS faces will be presenting both within this
symposium and elsewhere. But I wanted to get in touch partly to
recommend the Congress to anyone who *isn't* on the programme, but may
have an opportunity to attend. The deadline for early discounted
registration is in just ten days' time (Sunday 14 April). Registration
details are easily found on the main website at
<http://www.ichstm2013.com/>.

The theme of the SIGCIS symposium is "Data at work". This is a theme
I've become closely acquainted with from a variety of angles recently,
as I have somehow ended up with sole responsibility for building and
managing the data systems for the Congress programme from scratch. The
Congress (a four-yearly event) is, by most standards, big -- over 20
parallel session tracks across the full week, adding up to more than
1600 papers in total -- and fairly complex in its structure, and a
certain amount of crying over spilt PHP has been involved. You can see
the results of my handiwork at <http://www.ichstm2013.com/programme/guide/>.

By my reckoning, there are at least 40 obviously SIGCIS-relevant papers
on the programme, most of which appear on a dedicated "Computing,
information, comms" track to avoid clashes: see the timetable at
<http://www.ichstm2013.com/programme/timetable.html>. Some wider
connections to themes relevant to some researchers on this list are
covered in the "Systems, data, automation, computation" section at
<http://www.ichstm2013.com/programme/guide/m/discipline.html#a3>.

Below (with apologies for likelihood of mangled text on some systems) I
have cut and pasted listings of several core relevant symposia. I would
emphasise, however, that there is a *lot* of interesting material on the
wider programme, in fields ranging from military communications to
systems biology to the use of digital techniques in teaching history.
And there are highly relevant papers in broader sessions about other
themes. Two that leapt out at me are Per Lundin in S078 on oral history,
and Dick van Lente in T193 on STM in the public sphere. There are almost
certainly others: let me know what I've missed!

(Oh, and wearing my other apron, I'll also be presenting on
nineteenth-century beer...)

All best
James

S005. Mathematics and machines: explorations of machine-assisted
mathematics since 1800

Symposium organisers:
Maarten BULLYNCK | Université Paris 8, France
Liesbeth DE MOL | Ghent University, Belgium
Marie-José DURAND-RICHARD | Laboratoire SPHERE-UMR 7219, France
Fri 26 July, early morning until late afternoon

S005-A. Approaching machines and mathematics
Fri 26 July, early morning
Chair: Maarten BULLYNCK | Université Paris 8, France

Anthony MOORE | Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, France
Music machines and aural arithmetic

Peggy Aldrich KIDWELL | Smithsonian Institution, United States
Mathematical recreations and machines

Doron SWADE | Independent scholar, United Kingdom
Mathematics and machines: from calculation to computing

Gerard ALBERTS | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Mathematics as a machine

S005-B. Numerical mathematics and analog computing
Fri 26 July, late morning
Chair: Marie-José DURAND-RICHARD | Laboratoire SPHERE-UMR 7219, France

Johannes LENHARD | University of Bielefeld, Germany
Mathematics, machines, design: Carl Runge and the contested status of
numerical mathematics

Helena DURNOVA | Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Václav Láska (1862-1943) and Václav Hruška (1888-1954): machines and
practices in calculation in interwar Czechoslovakia

Ulf HASHAGEN | Deutsches Museum, Germany
Analog computing as a failed modernization program in the
military-industrial-academic complex of the Third Reich

Loïc PETITGIRARD | Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, France
Analog computing and the mathematics of dynamical systems: ‘theoretical
dynamics’ at the Centre de Recherche en Physique, Marseille, France,
1948-1964

S005-C. Mathematics through the machine's eye: the advent of digital
computing
Fri 26 July, early afternoon
Chair: Liesbeth DE MOL | Ghent University, Belgium

Marie-José DURAND-RICHARD | Laboratoire SPHERE-UMR 7219, France
Douglas R Hartree (1897-1958): from the differential analyzer to digital
computers

Allan OLLEY | Independent scholar, Canada
A task that exceeded the technology: early applications of the computer
to the lunar three-body problem

Maarten BULLYNCK | Université Paris 8, France
Computing primes with the help of machinery (1929-1949)

Mark PRIESTLEY | University College London, United Kingdom
 From computing plan to computer program: Monte Carlo and the ‘miracle
of the ENIAC’

S005-D. Programming mathematics on digital computers
Fri 26 July, late afternoon
Chair: Liesbeth DE MOL | Ghent University, Belgium

Claude LOBRY | INRIA-MODEMIC, France
De la «mise en equation» à la «mise en programme»

Wolfgang BRAND | University of Stuttgart, Germany
Getting in shape, form-finding in architecture: the force-density method
as a bridge between mathematics and machine

Edgar DAYLIGHT | Independent Scholar, Belgium
Edsger W. Dijkstra in the 1980s: proving theorems by programming an
ideal, non-existing, machine

Commentary: Renate TOBIES | Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany



S086. Data at work

Sponsoring body: SIGCIS: Society for the History of Technology Special
Interest Group on Computers, Information and Society

Symposium organisers:
Bernardo BATIZ-LAZO | Bangor University, United Kingdom
Miguel GARCIA-SANCHO | University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
James SUMNER | University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Mon 22 July, late morning until late afternoon

S086-A. Banking and innovation
Mon 22 July, late morning
Chair: Miguel GARCIA-SANCHO | University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Bernardo BATIZ-LAZO | Bangor University, United Kingdom
Myths and realities of the cashless society

J. Carles MAIXE-ALTES | University of A Coruña, Spain
Retail banking networks and teleprocessing in Europe, circa 1960-90

Ian MARTIN | Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Plastic concepts and material constraints: Barclaycard, Britain and the
rhetoric of the cashless society

Paul THOMES | RWTH Aachen University, Germany
The impact of technical progress on distribution and bank branches: a
quantitative and qualitative approach

S086-B. Biology, agriculture and medicine
Mon 22 July, early afternoon
Chair: to be announced

Miguel GARCIA-SANCHO | University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Writing the history of ‘computers’ and ‘data’ through their interactions
with biomedical research: from the genetic code to DNA sequencing
(1950s-1980s)

Joseph NOVEMBER | University of South Carolina, United States
The Cochrane Collaboration, beyond Cochrane

Hallam STEVENS | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Generating value: the Ensembl database and the dynamics of data

Sabina LEONELLI | University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Putting data to work in plant science, 1990-2012

S086-C. Making coding cultures
Mon 22 July, late afternoon
Chair: James SUMNER | University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Liesbeth DE MOL | Ghent University, Belgium
 From the machine’s eye? ENIAC and its different users

Thomas HAIGH | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States
Rethinking the stored-program concept

David NOFRE | Independent scholar, Netherlands
The promises and problems of a universal programming language:
reconciling scientific inquiry and technological stability in the ALGOL
project, 1960-1965

Tilly BLYTH | Science Museum, London, United Kingdom
De-coding public service: the production and consumption of cultural
values in the BBC microcomputer



P125. Enforced specialization in computing technology: debugging the
history of cooperation and competition in COMECON countries

Sponsoring body: ICOHTEC: International Committee for the History of
Technology

Organisers:
Helena DURNOVA | Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Slawomir LOTYSZ | University of Zielona Gora, Poland
Tue 23 July, early morning until early morning

Chair: Thomas HAIGH | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States

Pierre BOUILLON | École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, France
A paradoxical Franco-Romanian cooperation in computers, both supported
and circumscribed by the Cold War

Slawomir LOTYSZ | University of Zielona Gora, Poland
Plaiting a whip of sand: ups and downs of optical fiber technology in
pre-1989 Poland

Petri PAJU | University of Turku, Finland
Finlandized computing or business as usual? Computer trade between
Finland and the Soviet bloc in the 1970s

Frank DITTMANN | Deutsches Museum, Germany
The development of network technology in COMECON countries



T202-A. Information technology

Sat 27 July, early morning

Chair: to be announced

Marcelo VIANNA | Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul -
PUCRS, Brazil
Para além dos clones – a formação do campo da Informática no Brasil nos
anos 1980 através de três casos de fabricantes de microcomputadores
(1980-1988).
Beyond clones: the building up of the Brazilian information technology
field in the 1980s through three cases of personal computer
manufacturers, 1980-1988

Aracele TORRES | University of São Paulo, Brazil
Os estudos do software e a compreensão da sociedade contemporânea: o
caso do movimento software livre
Software studies and the understanding of contemporary society: the free
software movement case

BAO Ou | Institution of Science Technology & Society, School of Social
Sciences, Tsinghua University, China
翻译工作在中国计算机起步中的作用（1953-1967）
The role of translation in China’s starting development of the computer,
1953-1967

Scott CAMPBELL | University of Waterloo, Canada
Computation centres, configured users and early computer technology in
Canada