[SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing

[Jean Graham]

I am reminded of the mathematician Paul Erdős's comment, "A mathematician
is a device for turning coffee into theorems." Of course, he also used
amphetamines as an aid to productivity.

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 6:15 PM Michael Halvorson <halvormj at plu.edu> wrote:

> Kevin and James,
>
> At Microsoft/Redmond in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a lot of
> lore around the distribution of "free" sodas in refrigerators in most of
> the break rooms. This was before bottled water became a thing, for the most
> part. On tours for new employees and guests, there was a lot of admiration
> for the relatively narrow selection of Code, Diet Code, Milk, and Chocolate
> Milk, which people could freely consume if they wished. Coffee was less
> popular, but people did venture off "campus" for burgers, ribs, etc.
>
> The most popular stimulant beverage by far at Microsoft was Mountain Dew,
> among developers and the documentation teams. In other circles, Jolt Cola
> was popular, and mentioned in publications like *The Cyberpunk Handbook*
> (Random House, 1995), edited by R. U. Sirius [Ken Goffman], St. Jude [Jude
> Milhon], and Bart Nagel. See p. 66.
>
> --Michael
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 2:52 PM Kevin Driscoll <kdriscoll at alum.mit.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello Jim and SIGCIS,
>>
>> Two references come to mind:
>>
>> 1. The "Trojan Room coffee pot" at the U of Cambridge is often cited as
>> the first live camera on the web:
>> - Quentin Stafford-Fraser, “On Site: The Life and Times of the First Web
>> Cam,” Communications of the ACM 44, no. 7 (July 1, 2001): 25–26.
>> https://doi.org/10.1145/379300.379327.
>> - Full text of above without paywall:
>> https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/qsf/cacm200107.html
>> - Captured by the Wayback Machine on 10 December 1997:
>> http://web.archive.org/web/19971210230542/http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html
>>
>> 2. Roy Levin of Microsoft Research published a paper about running an
>> industry lab in which he recommends that managers "INSTALL A WORLD-CLASS
>> COFFEE MACHINE" and notes that "the first capital purchase" at MSR-Silicon
>> Valley was an espresso machine.
>> - Roy Levin, “A Perspective on Computing Research Management,” ACM SIGOPS
>> Operating Systems Review 41, no. 2 (April 1, 2007): 3–9,
>> https://doi.org/10.1145/1243418.1243420.
>>
>> I've heard other lore about coffee culture at Microsoft that involves the
>> proximity of Starbucks in the 1990s. Allegedly, management lobbied for
>> coffee carts in every building to keep programmers from driving to
>> off-campus coffeehouses. No cite for that one but it would be fun to track
>> down the origin of the story.
>>
>> Looking forward to a caffeinated special issue of the Annals on the
>> transnational history of stimulants and computing.
>>
>> Best of luck,
>>
>> Kevin Driscoll
>> U of Virginia
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 3:41 PM James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> The IT community of users, programmers, vendors, etc have for decades
>>> had a reputation for being extensive consumers of coffee. In some parts of
>>> the IT ecosystem, especially among those who work odd hours, such as
>>> programmers, computer operators, and vendor field engineers.  I am studying
>>> the corporate ephemera of this industry and its cultural attachments, such
>>> as coffee cups and what they tell us about computing.  Do any of you have
>>> any information, ephemera, or sources and citations on this specific issue
>>> of coffee and computing?  I can get many industry folks, such as IBM
>>> retirees, to wax eloquently on the subject in their private FB accounts,
>>> but that is not enough.  Corporate culture is tough to study.  Thanks in
>>> advance for your help.  Jim
>>> --
>>> James W. Cortada
>>> Senior Research Fellow
>>> Charles Babbage Institute
>>> University of Minnesota
>>> jcortada at umn.edu
>>> 608-274-6382
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>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Michael J. Halvorson
> Benson Family Chair in Business and Economic History
>
>
> Author of: *Code Nation: Personal Computing and the Learn to Program
> Movement in America (2020) <http://www.thiscodenation.com>*
>
>
>
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