[SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing

[Hintz, Eric]

Hi SIGCIS-

I’ve loved seeing all the great responses to James’s query re: coffee culture.  I immediately thought of Hewlett Packard’s twice daily coffee breaks as described in David Packard’s, The HP Way<https://www.amazon.com/HP-Way-Hewlett-Business-Essentials/dp/0060845791> (1995).   Re: ephemera, it looks like there are also pamphlets like “The HP way…”<https://www.hpalumni.org/HPWayBooklet1980.pdf> (1980) preserved at hpalumni.org that describe the coffee breaks. I would love to hear more from Chuck House or other HP alums about this.  Back in career 1.0 as a Bay Area IT consultant in the late 1990s, early 2000s, I can attest that HP and Agilent sites in and around Sunnyvale, Cupertino had outstanding break areas, with coffee machines and hot water, all the coffee, tea bags, sugar, creamer, and little straw stirrers you could want!

I suspect there is a military angle here too. I am thinking of military computer operators attending to missile early warning systems on three shifts, 24/7, and needing coffee to stay alert.

Best-
Eric
__________________
Eric S. Hintz, PhD, Historian, Lemelson Center
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Co-editor, Does America Need More Innovators?<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/does-america-need-more-innovators> (MIT Press, 2019)


From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of James Cortada
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020 3:42 PM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing

External Email - Exercise Caution

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<mailto:jcortada at umn.edu>
608-274-6382
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