August 2008 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Event: Vintage Computer Festival East 5.0
by Evan Koblentz 01 Sep '08

01 Sep '08

Hello, ...Just wanted to invite everyone to an upcoming event at my museum (the InfoAge Science Center, located on the NJ shore in Wall Township)... It's the Vintage Computer Festival East 5.0, Sept. 13-14. The VCF first existed in Silicon Valley back in 1997 and then expanded to other regions. VCF is a ** celebration ** of computers from the 1940s - 1980s. Imagine a car show .... and the imagine that every owner lets you drive his car! That's what the VCF is all about, seeing the computers up and running again. We also have special events. This year's are a replica creation workshop, where you can build a replica of the Apple 1 or the KIM under kit creator Vince Briel's guidance, and we'll have a ceremony and tours for the "beta" opening of our computer museum. (We've been in "alpha" for the past two years.) Sign up for Vince's workshop at <http://www.vintage.org/2008/east/workshop.php?action=select&id=104> http://www.vintage.org/2008/east/workshop.php?action=select&id=104. We'll also have some cool guest speakers. Most notably, on Sunday, we have Bill Mauchly. Bill is the son of ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly. We also have a lesser-known engineer named Watts Humphrey, who wrote the proposal for the military's "MOBIDIC" computer in the 1950s; it was an early example of client-server architecture. And we've got Claude Kagan, who spent 30 years at Western Electric and Bell Labs and who worked to get our museum a first-generation DEC PDP-8 minicomputer. Tickets for one day are $10, both days combined are $15, and anyone younger than 18 is free. Parking's free too. - Evan PS - Just as I spoke at SHOT last year about the hobbyist side of computer history, it would be beneficial to have someone from this list speak to our hobbyist audience about academic side of computer history -- how we hobbyists can help, and how we can learn too. Tom isn't able to make it that weekend. Unfortunately my other choice was Michael Mahoney. :( Is anyone else here interested in talking at our event? - Evan

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SIGCIS Panels and Grad Student travel awards for SHOT 2008
by Thomas Haigh 26 Aug '08

26 Aug '08

Hello everyone, This email is a request for people who are interested in participating in SIGCIS sponsored panels at the annual meeting to get in touch with me. The deadline is March 14, which means I need to hear from you within the next few days with an initial expression of interest. SHOT does not need full papers, but I would need an abstract and one page resume by March 9. The normal SHOT format is for three or four talks of 20-25 minutes each followed by a commentator and questions. I can't promise that all ideas can be fitted neatly into one of our panel proposals. However if I can't accommodate whatever you are interested in within a panel then you still have the option of submitting your abstract as an individual paper. What I've done for each of the past three conferences is to circulate a call like this and receive a short summary from interested people of the work they'd like to present. Then I look for connections among the ideas and group them into one or more thematically coherent panel proposals. I work with the authors to strengthen their abstracts and to tweak them to better fit the panel. This has worked well in the past. Last year we submitted three panels, all of which were accepted. For the previous year we had two panels, both accepted. Once we see how things are shaping up we may use the list again to appeal for additional papers on specific topics or for chairs or commentators. You've already seen a couple of reminders of the upcoming SHOT 2008 meeting from other people. Lisbon, October 10-14. Lots of information including maps, hotels, travel, etc. is now online at http://www.shotlisbon2008.com/meeting.htm. The call for papers is at http://shotnews.net/?p=401. It mentions looking for papers on how the history of technology might be written in the future, so this may lead to a panel of historiographical papers about the future of the history of computing. However other ideas are also welcome. It also appeals for papers "from those new to SHOT regardless of discipline." If you are a graduate student there is an additional reason to join one of our panels. At the last meeting we raised enough money with our collection and book auction to fund two graduate student travel awards of $300 each to support the cost of attending the meeting. Any student presenting in a SIGCIS sponsored panel will be eligible for consideration for one of these awards. It promises to be a great meeting, and I hope to see many of you there in Lisbon. At the last SHOT meeting we had far more history of computing panels than ever before - so let's try to set another record this year. Tom Haigh www.tomandmaria.com/tom

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4S in Rotterdam - possible dinner
by Thomas Haigh 18 Aug '08

18 Aug '08

Hello everyone, The 2008 4S conference begins in Rotterdam on Wednesday, August 20th. http://www.4sonline.org/meeting.htm Following our customary practice I am proposing to organize an informal and affordable dinner for anyone with an interest in the history of computing. This would probably be on Thursday night before the panel. If nobody is going to the official and hugely expensive banquet then we could instead aim for Friday night. Please email me if you are interested - I will send the final details ONLY to people who confirm interest to avoid spamming the list. If you can't get to email you could also text my cell phone during the meeting: +1 414 526 6631. For the third successive year this includes a SIGCIS organized panel, this one prepared in collaboration with the Software for Europe Project. I'm please that we were able to get celebrated STS scholar Trevor Pinch as commentator, which should give our panel a little visibility in the ever-expanding ocean of concurrent sessions that 4S has become. It's an exciting panel, looking at the relationship between computing practices and national/transnational identities on both sides of the iron curtain. Our session is on Friday, 22 Aug from 11.00-12.30 am. Session 2.2.4: Symbolic Internationalism: Computing, Users and (Trans)national Agendas Organizer: Thomas Haigh Room: T3-31 Chair: Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin, thaigh(a)computer.org Policy Machines: Shaping European Computer Users Corinna Schlombs, University of Pennsylvania, schlombs(a)sas.upenn.edu Transnational Technology: The Unified System of Computing and its Discursive Practices Simon Donig, University of Passau, simon.donig(a)uni-passau.de Socialist Internationalism and its Limits in Czech Computing Helena Durnova, Brno University of Technology, durnova(a)feec.vutbr.cz The Goodbye Petrovka Plan: Internet Use and National Identity in Ukraine Maria Haigh, University of Wisconsin, mhaigh(a)uwm.edu Discussant: Trevor Pinch, Cornell University, tjp2(a)cornell.edu The conference program is dominated by medical and environmental themes. IT shows up in a number of contexts, including panels on standards, online game worlds, and open source and the fashionable world of surveillance studies. Please reply ASAP if you may be interested in dinner (this includes the panel participants). Tom

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SIGCIS Secretary Needed.
by Thomas Haigh 18 Aug '08

18 Aug '08

Hello everyone, SIGCIS has a vacancy for secretary. Joline Zepchevski, our hard working secretary in 2006 and 2007, has had to resign to spend more time on her dissertation. The duties are fairly light, and mostly involve taking care of our members. There is no pay. As described on our website http://www.sigcis.org/?q=node/6 the responsibilities are as follows Secretary . Administer the SIGCIS email lists (including maintain and enforcing the acceptable use policy). . Edit material on the SIGCIS website dealing with the SIG and its activities. . Maintain and develop bylaws and other policy documents as needed. . Maintain the SIG's online membership directory, reviewing and editing entries as needed. . Produce the lists of attendees and interests for the SIG's annual meetings. . Welcome new members to the SIG and create accounts as needed. . Take minutes at Executive Committee meetings. You would also be a member of the Executive Committee, and be well placed to contribute to the institutional development of the history of computing as an increasingly visible and diverse subdiscipline. Additional creative contributions to the SIGCIS blog, online resources, etc. would be very welcome. Over the next year or two we expect to add at least one prize, expand our travel award program and begin to schedule a symposium in conjunction with the SHOT annual meeting. It's an exciting time and the SIG is growing up fast. The ideal secretary would combine reliability and an eye for detail with an outgoing personality. As you'd be interacting with the history of computing community all over the world you would have a chance to raise your profile and impress us all with your abilities. Planning to attend at least one of the next two SHOT meetings (Lisbon and Pittsburgh) would be a definite advantage. Graduate students are welcome, as are people living outside North America. If you are interested, or have a friend to nominate, then please let me know within the next week. We will need to have a secretary in place by the end of the month to get ready for the Lisbon meeting. Tom

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Re: Computers in banking @ Halifax
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 18 Aug '08

18 Aug '08

Further to my previous message, copies of the book below can only be purchased directly from the author (at £12 pounds each plus pp) RicBarrow(a)aol.com [RicBarrow(a)aol.com] Fern House, Old Lane, Ripponden HX6 4PA. I do apologize for the misinformation Kind regards Bernardo ----- Original Message ---- Subject: Computers in banking @ Halifax A note to those interested in the history of IBM or computers in banking, you might want to get a hold of Barrow, Richard (2006) Fifty More Years of the Halifax 1953-2003, Halifax: HBOS & Richard Barrow ISBN 13: 9780955298301 It is available through Amazon on both sides of the pond. This is a personal but detailed account of the computerization of the Halifax Building Society (the largest mortgage specialists in the UK for much of the 20th century). His memory was helped by unfettered access to the historical records at HBOS in Edinburgh . Style and tone are rather colloquial but there are a number of 'pearls of wisdom' as well as an insight into management thinking and events that will not be available otherwise (as HBOS has a 30 year closure period policy for its records). Halifaxwas unique not only because of its size but also given that it built its own systems based on IBM assembler. They never (or only by exception) purchase 'of the shelf'. Instead their policy was to 'build from scratch' and their motto was "anyone would be fire if they bought IBM". Barrow tells of different encounters in which top management was assaulted by 'Big Blue' but always decided in favour of the in house team. I have recently interviewed Barrow and will be posting the transcript within the sigcis website, where he clarifies details around the deployment of ATM technology. Best, Bernardo

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SIGCIS Grad student travel funding for SHOT - apply now
by Thomas Haigh 16 Aug '08

16 Aug '08

Hello everyone, You may remember that we raised a little bit of money at the last meeting, which the SIGCIS Executive Committee decided to earmark for support of graduate students presenting at the meeting. We'd originally decided to limit this to official SIGCIS sponsored panels, but unfortunately our grad-student heavy panel was rejected despite being a very strong proposal. So we decided to broaden things out and offer our tiny $600 fund as support to any existing SIGCIS members who are graduate student and presenting at SHOT. It seems from the program that there are a decent number of such people. The amount of money involved is quite small (max $300 per person, but very probably less) so it seemed excessive to charter a new committee and force people to submit a fancy application form. On the other hand it would be arbitrary for us to pick people without information on other funding sources (including SHOT), etc. So our stroke of genius was to get the main SHOT committee for graduate student funding to agree to make decisions on additional funding based on the mass of information you already supplied and their knowledge of how much money they already awarded. If you are interested, please email me and say so by August 22nd. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY FILLED THE FORM IN FOR SHOT. However you don't need to send any other info. I will then collate the names, and assuming there are more than two people interested I will pass them onto the main SHOT grad student travel grant committee so they can figure out who gets what. (If for some reason you didn't apply for the SHOT money then let me know anyway and I'll figure out what to do). We'll be aiming to raise more money at the meeting to pay for next year's travel assistance, including a continuation of last year's successful book auction and our traditional passing of the money bowl. Thanks to all those who contributed in DC. Best wishes, Tom

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Computers in banking @ Halifax
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 16 Aug '08

16 Aug '08

A note to those interested in the history of IBM or computers in banking, you might want to get a hold of Barrow, Richard (2006) Fifty More Years of the Halifax 1953-2003, Halifax: HBOS & Richard Barrow ISBN 13: 9780955298301It is available through Amazon on both sides of the pond. This is a personal but detailed account of the computerization of the Halifax Building Society (the largest mortgage specialists in the UK for much of the 20th century). His memory was helped by unfettered access to the historical records at HBOS in Edinburgh. Style and tone are rather colloquial but there are a number of 'pearls of wisdom' as well as an insight into management thinking and events that will not be available otherwise (as HBOS has a 30 year closure period policy for its records). Halifaxwas unique not only because of its size but also given that it built its own systems based on IBM assembler. They never (or only by exception) purchase 'of the shelf'. Instead their policy was to 'build from scratch' and their motto was "anyone would be fire if they bought IBM". Barrow tells of different encounters in which top management was assaulted by 'Big Blue' but always decided in favour of the in house team. I have recently interviewed Barrow and will be posting the transcript within the sigcis website, where he clarifies details around the deployment of ATM technology. Best, Bernardo

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Computers in banking @ Bordeaux
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 14 Aug '08

14 Aug '08

Dear all, We are happy to inform of further developments around computers in banking enthusiasts. Following the very successful meetings at Aachen and more recently at Bordeux (which proceeded thanks to the financial support respectively of RWTH Aachen University and the Maison des Sciences de L'Homme D'Aquitane and GRETHA-Universite Montesquieu-Bordeaux 4), we are now in a position to expect a first draft by November 1st 2008 of the documents below. Abstracts - http://sigcis.org/?q=node/9 01) Mechanisation or not? Postal Savings in Japan by Katalin Ferber 02) The development of the use of accounting machines in French banks from the 1920s to the 1950s by Hubert Bonin 03) Expanding Business, Scarcity of Workforce and Technical Progress – The Case of German Savings Banks (sbs) in 20th century by Paul Thomes 04) Making Space for Computers in the Business of Banking: Barclays and Britain in the 1960s by Ian Martin 05) Britain’s National Giro, 1965-1977: Computerized Nationalism? by Mark Billings and Alan Booth 06) Organisational Change and the Computerisation of British and Spanish Savings Banks, circa 1950-1985 by B. Bátiz-Lazo and J. Carles Maixé-Altés 07) Automation in Mexican Financial Services: 1950-2007. by Gustavo del Angel 08) Banks as Partners in IT Innovation : A Study of the French Case by Pierre Mounier-Khun 10) Networks, Boundaries, and Gateways: The Visa Payment by Dave Stearns 11) Computarisation of Rabobank - Joke Moij 12) Computers, Banks and Big Business by Lars Haide kind regards Paul Thomes (RWTH-AACHEN); J. Carles Maixe-Altes (A Coru~a); Bernardo Batiz-Lazo (Leicester)

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