[SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing

[Jeff Thompson]

Also maybe not exactly what you’re after, but there are “coffee clubs” scattered all around the Bell Labs campus, where researchers pool money to buy coffee machines (of differing levels of fanciness) and supplies. The one right near the Unix group is particularly nice!

Jeff

- - -
Jeff Thompson
Assistant Professor, Program Director
Visual Art & Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology

www.jeffreythompson.org
@jeffkthompson


> On Jul 21, 2020, at 10:27 AM, Roger Johnson <rgj at dcs.bbk.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> Dear Jim
>  
> I am not sure if this is exactly what you want to hear but I clearly remember the morning ritual when  I joined CAP in London (then one of the UK’s major software houses) in 1972. The first person in started up the filter coffee machine which had the large glass flasks filled by passing hot water through the coffee held in a filter paper. However it took a long time to fill the flask and we rapidly worked out with a little manual dexterity it was possible to whip the flask aside and hold one’s mug under the coffee flowing out of the funnel holding the filter paper. When your mug was filled the flask could be switched back to catch the flow.
>  
> Only years later did I realise that the first coffee through the machine must have been packed with caffeine. No wonder we were a very excitable bunch of programmers! We also consumed a tin box of assorted sweet biscuits during the day so our diet was probably not the best - still we built good systems in COBOL and PL/1! Happy days …
>  
> Good wishes
>  
> Roger
>  
> From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of Gerard Alberts
> Sent: 21 July 2020 15:10
> To: James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu>; members at sigcis.org
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing
>  
> Dear Jim,
> 
> Allow me to chip in my tiny story of ephemera and turn it into a challenge to you.
> 
> On the edge of my bookshelf was for years a champaign glass, until it fell off into a dozen pieces --as do things in precarious positions. The glass had been engraved with the IBM logo and reminded the date of the opening of some new data center or computing center. I collected it from the flea market.
> 
> I picked it up, because to me it represented the lore of emblems, decorations, fountain pens. It is a culture not uncommon in the world of computing, but IBM was particularly good at it, mixing --often macho tainted-- company  pride with celebration of technical progress. There was a high culture of walking well suited, of not riding a motercycle when visiting clients, of not spoiling coffee but finishing a job on ephedrine.
> 
> Jim, the lore of the coffee mug is all around and, judging from the response, we all have access to this low hanging fruit --I reckon the same would be true of printed T-shirts as ephemera of hacker culture. But few would have access like you have to the high culture of computing, of human struggling with computing --still tacit knowledge but visible to your exquisite ethnographical perception. Help us by collecting the ephemera and anecdotes on the further branches of the tree.
> 
> Surprise me with things I would not even have recognized as ephemera of computing culture.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Gerard
> 
> Van: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> namens James Cortada <jcortada at umn.edu>
> Verzonden: maandag 20 juli 2020 21:41
> Aan: members at sigcis.org
> Onderwerp: [SIGCIS-Members] Help on Coffee and Computing
>  
> 
> 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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