[SIGCIS-Members] [EXTERNAL] Re: Vint Hill Farms, VA

Tue Oct 27 21:33:10 PDT 2020

Really? CERN has a Route Fermi, and Route Oppenheimer, running from Route Feynman to nowhere in particular. But mainly, they seem to have avoided naming streets after Los Alamos alumni. Rather nicely from a historical viewpoint, there is also Route Democrite, connecting Rutherford to Pauli. And one for this list, Route Babbage. It runs alongside Building 510 at CERN, which was the original computer centre. The first CERN computer was a Ferranti Mercury.

(There's a lot of material at https://information-technology.web.cern.ch/about/cern-computing-history)

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 28-Oct-20 10:32, Grider, Gary Alan wrote:
> Fascinating, at Los Alamos our streets are named after islands that don’t exist anymore.
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> Gary Grider
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> LANL
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> *From: *Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Marc Weber <marc at webhistory.org>
> *Date: *Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 3:30 PM
> *To: *"Schmitt, Martin" <martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de>, "members at lists.sigcis.org" <members at lists.sigcis.org>
> *Subject: *[EXTERNAL] Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Vint Hill Farms, VA
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> Not quite computing names but CERN, the huge high-energy physics research lab where the Web was created, has a lot of streets named after physicists – Einstein Drive, Rutherford Way, and so on as I recall. It also has a long and significant history of computer research beyond the Web. 
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> An under-appreciated sacred site in computing is the Dollis Hill Post Office research station in North London, where Churchill had a communications bunker, Tommy Flowers and his team worked on Colossus, ERNIE was created to generate lottery numbers, and Sam Fedida developed videotex – of which Minitel was the most successful variant. The research station has been turned into condos today, but you can walk around the outside. 
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> Best, Marc
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> Marc Weber <http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/>  |   marc at webhistory.org <mailto:marc at webhistory.org>  |   +1 415 282 6868 | Zoom 901 292 1071
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> Curatorial Director, Internet History Program
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> Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043
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> computerhistory.org/nethistory <http://computerhistory.org/nethistory>  |  Co-founder, Web History Center and Project
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>     On Oct 26, 2020, at 15:57, Schmitt, Martin <martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de <mailto:martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de>> wrote:
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>     The quarter of the computer pioneers! The story of the area formerly used by state surveillance reminds me a little bit of the bunker sold by the German military to a Dutch business man to operate his dark net activities in the German province: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/the-cold-war-bunker-that-became-home-to-a-dark-web-empire
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>     The Cold War left us with some fascinating infrastructure around.
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>     In Germany, many streets are named after Konrad Zuse by the way. To my knowledge, none of them crosses a Gottfried Leibniz Street.
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>     Best
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>     Martin
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>     Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter | Post-Doc | digital enthusiast
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>     Technische Universität Darmstadt
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>     Institut für Geschichte
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>     Fachgebiet Technikgeschichte
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>     Mail: martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de <mailto:martin.schmitt at tu-darmstadt.de>
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>     Tel: +49  6151-16-57327
>     http://www.computerisierung.com <http://www.computerisierung.com/>
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>     &
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>     Assoziierter Wissenschaftler
>     LEIBNIZ-ZENTRUM FÜR ZEITHISTORISCHE FORSCHUNG | POTSDAM 
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>     Vice Chair IFIP WG 9.7 „History of computing"
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>     Zuletzt erschienen: Leslie, Christopher und Martin Schmitt (eds.): Histories of Computing in Eastern Europe, Cham: Springer International Publishing 2019 (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology 549), https://www.springer.com/978-3-030-29159-4
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>         Am 26.10.2020 um 23:20 schrieb Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu <mailto:CeruzziP at si.edu>>:
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>         I wrote about this a few years ago, but many of you haven't heard of this. Vint Hill Farms was for many years a listening post for intercepting foreign radio transmissions, including some that were of crucial significance during the Second World War. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Hill_Farms_Station>
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>         After it was decommissioned in 1997 the NSA "sanitized" the property and turned it over to commercial and other government uses. <https://vinthill.com/>.
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>         The reason I mention this is that a housing development on one corner of the property has some interesting names of streets:
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>         Cray Drive, Osborne Drive, Sutherland Court, Shugart Court, Auerbach Court, Hillis Court, Wilkes Court, Wirth Lane, Macintosh Drive, Sholes Court [?], von Neumann Circle, and Aiken Drive, and Eckert Court. 
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>         <https://goo.gl/maps/5aMYoRkjVt6xpRyUA>
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>         Last time I visited, I asked the real estate agents who came up with the names, but they did not know. The property has an extensive web site, but I did not see any clues there either, unless I missed something.  I really wanted to know:  which Eckert--Wallace or Presper?
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>         Do we have a real estate developer lurking among us? 
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>         Paul Ceruzzi
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