March 2011 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

2010: SIGCIS's Year in Review
by Thomas Haigh 03 Nov '11

03 Nov '11

Dear SIGCIS members, I hope this end of year message finds you all well and in a relaxed holiday mood. SIGCIS has had another good year, reaching new heights on every measurable aspect of our activities. The number of members reached a new high (over 250), the number and quality of contributions to the email list was greater than ever before, we raised more money at our annual lunch with our book auctions and small than ever before ($1,486) and gave out more travel grants (www.sigcis.org/travelaward) to participants than ever before ($2,400). Our second annual workshop received more submissions than the first, and more people attended. The Mahoney Fund (www.sigcis.org/mahoney) holds its highest balance to date (over $8,000) after its best year of donations so far (at least $2,850). So does our operating account (around $3,500). For the most part, then, it was a year of consolidation and incremental growth. If something can be done annually for several years then it becomes a tradition, and perhaps the most crucial stumbling block is doing something twice. SIGCIS made the second Computer History Museum award (http://www.sigcis.org/chmprize) to Atsushi Akera for his book Computing a Natural World. The second SIGCIS Workshop, http://www.sigcis.org/workshop10, was a great success. See the full report at http://www.sigcis.org/node/13. We are already planning for next year's. SHOT's 2011 meeting is collocated with the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing editorial board meeting, as well as with several scholarly societies, and so we anticipate a particularly good turnout among the field's best known scholars. Despite our focus on institutional sustainability the SIGCIS team did launch several new projects. These fit with our philosophy of looking for simple, easy and low cost ways to strengthen the international scholarly community in history of computing. This year's breakout hit was the syllabus repository (http://www.sigcis.org/syllabi) It now holds around forty syllabi showcasing a broad range of approaches to teaching in the area. (Here's a new year resolution: if you have a new syllabus and are willing to share it please send a copy now to secretary(a)sigcis.org) Our team of international vice presidents added new resource guides for the history of computing in Britain (http://www.sigcis.org/britain) and Japan (http://www.sigcis.org/japan) We also added a new edition of Anne Fitzpatrick's Pioneers of Soviet Computing to the Member Contributions area (http://www.sigcis.org/contributions) Next year we will be looking for new ways to strengthen this part of the website. Another new initiative is currently unfolding. Behind the scenes we updated the site this year to use a current release of Drupal, fixing some glitches that had accumulated over the years. Our platform includes blogging and comment capabilities, and we have been experimenting with the best way to use it. Chris McDonald of Princeton and Marie Hicks of Duke have recently joined the SIGCIS executive committee (http://www.sigcis.org/node/6) and have taken special responsibility for this. Dag Spicer will also be blogging to keep us up to date with events at the Computer History Museum. You can see the latest from them at http://www.sigcis.org/blog. All SIGCIS members can login to post comments. If you would like your own blog on the site them please contact us. In the future we will be experimenting with ways to use blogs, wikis, and the email list together - for example by asking a question by email and then having answers accumulate on a blog page. Another good new year resolution: check your entry in our member directory at http://www.sigcis.org/members and make any updates needed by logging in at http://www.sigcis.org/user. Thanks to all of you who have contributed to SIGCIS over the past year, whether as email posters, organizers, donors, syllabus providers, bidders in the book auction, workshop attendees, or readers of our website and messages. If you have ideas on how to make 2011 another record breaking year for the SIG, or would like to get involved as a volunteer, then please get in touch. Happy holidays, Tom Haigh, SIGCIS chair www.tomandmaria.com/tom

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Vintage Computer Festival, revisited
by Evan Koblentz 27 May '11

27 May '11

Hi all, I never seem to get much interest from SIGCIS people for the Vintage Computer Festival, but the upcoming edition (VCF East 7.0) might appeal more to this group than in years past. This year's speaker line-up includes Ruth Lewart, who worked on Bell Labs' TRADIC; Vincent Pogorzelski and Donald Caselli, who both worked at Monroe Calculator and specifically worked with the Monrobot XI; Joe LaViola and Al Rollin, both of UNIVAC/Unisys; and Michael Holley, who was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and is an expert on Southwest Technical Products. Also this year, we're having a panel discussion about the New York City / New Jersey / Philadelphia region in the mid-1970s, including Roger Amidon (of Xitan / Technical Design Labs, which were S-100 companies), Dick Moberg (founder of the Philadelphia Area Computer Society and the 1978 Philadelphia Computer Music Festival), and Larry Stein (owner of Computer Mart of Iselin, N.J., which was one of the first computer stores in the state.) For this panel we also invited (but have not yet received confirmations from) John Dilks, who produced the Atlantic City PC'76 show; Sol Libes, who produced and still runs the Trenton Computer Festival and the Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey (possibly the longest-running user group); and David Ahl, who published Creative Computing magazine. And that's just in the morning sessions. Afternoons at our event feature the exhibit hall, a build-your-own transistor-logic circuit workshop, book sale, consignment, and museum tours. Our venue is the InfoAge Science Center, located in Wall, New Jersey. Our event is a wonderful opportunity to hear from people who worked in the field and (most important of all) to see vintage computers boot up and run again! Our event site is http://www.vintage.org/2011/east/ and we're on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/vcfeast7 . - Evan

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Volume 4 of Knuth!
by Ceruzzi, Paul 22 Apr '11

22 Apr '11

Amazon has listed volume "4A" of Knuth. I won't believe it until I get my hands on it. Volume Three (Sorting and Searching), was published in 1973. Does this strike anyone else besides me as strange? Knuth had a huge influence the history of computing--besides his contribution to computing. I use the past tense because I haven't seen Volume 4 yet. I wrote a bit more on this in the IT History blog (ithistory.org/blog) Paul E. Ceruzzi Chair, Division of Space History National Air & Space Museum MRC 311; PO Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-7012 202-633-2414 <http://www.nasm.si.edu/staffDetail.cfm?staffID=24>

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ACM History Fellowship ---> deadline 15 April
by Thomas J. Misa 30 Mar '11

30 Mar '11

Hi all, Gentle reminder that the /deadline/ for proposals to ACM is two week's away -- 15 April. Information, past winners/projects, --- how to submit a proposal -- is here: http://history.acm.org/content.php?do=fellowship Best, Tom Misa

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Jean Bartik
by Evan Koblentz 23 Mar '11

23 Mar '11

Jean Bartik died this morning. Her son Timothy emailed Bill Mauchly, who told myself and others. Tim wrote: >>> My mom died early this morning. I was already scheduled to fly out to Poughkeepsie this morning because we knew this likely was coming. My sister Mary is already out there with Jane. We will be figuring out some things and telling some stories. I don't think there will be a memorial service in the short-term. There will probably be some service later this spring or summer in Missouri, when she is buried next to her siblings in the Jennings Cemetery in Stanberry Missouri. >>> Please notify anyone else you think might want to know. >>> She died very peacefully -- she just stopped breathing a little after midnight, very early this morning. We had decided Monday night not to hospitalize her when she was in renal failure. She had made it clear on Saturday and Sunday that she did not want under any circumstances to go back in the hospital. Actually Monday night, the last thing I heard her say was that she wanted to stay at the Pines, and I heard her even though she was 10 feet away from the phone. It must have taken a tremendous amount of will power to speak up so loudly when she could barely talk. >>> As you know from reading my mom's memoir, my mom placed great value on her friendship with Kay. I promised my Mom I would get her memoir published in some form. I think NWMSU is self-publishing it with some service, but there will be some copies printed and it will be for sale at Amazon. I want to set up a website where anyone can download it for free. I also hope that Kathy Kleiman's documentary gets produced. Sorry to break this news. Tim's email is BARTIK(a)upjohn.org. - Evan

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Last chance for a SIGCIS panel for SHOT
by Thomas Haigh 11 Mar '11

11 Mar '11

Hello, In response to my earlier call to see if anyone was interested in a SIGCIS organized/sponsored panel for the main SHOT conference (see http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/2011-February/053632.html) I had received several replies. Some seem to fit nicely into a possible panel. There's also an "orphan" that didn't fit with the proposals so far received: "Complexity, Verification and the rise of Object Oriented Programming." So I promised I would circulate another call, to see if maybe there are other possible papers that could be joined with this one to make a thematically related panel proposal. That might be relevant with other papers on practice, software, relationship of tools to metal models of the world, etc. In other news: I don't want to spam people with my personal life, but we were joined by a new baby as scheduled two weeks ago, and those who are interested can see the evidence at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=289153&id=592754290&l=b1d33e4964. Tom

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CfP -- International conference on the history and philosophy of computing
by Liesbeth De Mol 10 Mar '11

10 Mar '11

Dear colleagues, the CfP for the conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing, November 7-10, 2011, Universiteit Gent is now open. The aim of this conference is to bring together historians and philosophers of computing. Hence, i think that members of this list might be interested in this conference, very best regards, Liesbeth. [apologies for crosspostings] CALL FOR PAPERS /International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing/ 7―10 November 2011 Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium http://www.computing-conference.ugent.be Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the famous 1936 Papers by A. Church, E.L. Post and A.M. Turing. From 7-10 November 2011 the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University organizes an International Conference on the History and Philosophy of computing. The number of researchers working in fields related to computing is growing rapidly in many different directions. As Mahoney once stated, “the computer is not one thing but many different things, and the same holds true of computing”. As a consequence, the computing sciences collect the most diverse complex of experts: philosophers, logicians, historians, mathematicians, computer scientists, programmers, engineers. The number of involved subjects grows accordingly: from the foundational issues to their applications; from the philosophical questions to problems of realizability and design of specifications; from the theoretical studies of computational barriers to the relevance of machines for educational purposes. Given the significance of computing for modern society, the relevance of its history and philosophy can hardly be overestimated. The aim of this conference is to bring together these two streams: we are strongly convinced that an interplay between researchers with an interest in the history and philosophy of computing can crucially add to the maturity of the field. Topics of the conference include but are not restricted to: ･ The history of computing ･ Philosophical, foundational and practical issues of computability in logic, mathematics and computer science • Computation in the sciences For a more detailed list of possible topics see http://www.computing-conference.ugent.behttp://www.computing-conference.uge… SUBMISSION DETAILS: We cordially invite researchers working in a field relevant to the main topics of the conference to submit a short abstract of approximately 200 words and an extended abstract of at most a 1000 words (references included) to https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=hapoc11 Abstracts must be written in English. Please note that the format of uploaded files must be .pdf or .doc. In order to access the submission page, the creation of an EasyChair account will be required. Please notice that what is called “abstract” in the EasyChair “Title, Abstract and Other Information” section corresponds to the short abstract of this call, and what is called “paper” in the EasyChair “Upload Paper” section corresponds to the extended abstract of this call. IMPORTANT DATES: Submission deadline: May 15, 2011 Notification of acceptance: July 20, 2011 INVITED SPEAKERS: Bill Aspray (University of Texas) Martin Davis (New York University, UC Berkeley) Fairouz Kamareddine (Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh) Sybille Krämer (Freie Universität Berlin) Giovanni Sambin (Universita' di Padova) Raymond Turner (University of Essex) Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Research) CONFERENCE CHAIRS: Liesbeth De Mol and Giuseppe Primiero PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: G. Alberts (Amsterdam); S. Artemov (New York); M. Campbell-Kelly (Warwick); L. Corry (Tel Aviv) M. Denecker (Leuven); A. Eden (Essex); L. Floridi (Oxford & Hertfordshire); R. Kahle (Lisbon); B. Loewe (Amsterdam); J. Meheus (Ghent); E. Myin (Antwerp); S. Negri (Helsinki) V. de Paiva (Palo Alto); S. Smets (Groningen); G. Sundholm (Leiden); C. Toffalori (Camerino); J.-.P. van Bendegem (Brussels); M. van Dyck (Ghent); B. van Kerkhove (Brussels & Hasselt); E. Weber (Ghent) GRANTS The International Association for Computing and Philosophy http://ia-cap.org/ will fund a $500 travel grant for an IACAP graduate student to attend. IACAP graduate students who would like to apply for this grant need to send a copy of their submission to Tony Beavers (executivedirector@ia-cap.orgexecutivedirector@ia-cap.org), executive director of IACAP. The Association also offers a 10% discount on the conference fee for IACAP members. Student members of the Association for Symbolic Logic http://www.aslonline.org/index.htmhttp://www.aslonline.org/index.htm also may apply for ASL travel support. Applications have to be addressed directly to the ASL. For more information and application details on ASL student travel awards see http://www.aslonline.org/studenttravelawards.htmlhttp://www.aslonline.org/s…. Note that the deadline for application is 7, 2011. SPECIAL ISSUES A selection of papers will be published as a special issue of the journal Philosophy & Technology (Springer) http://www.springer.com/philosophy/epistemology+and+philosophy+of+science/j… We also intend to publish a selection of papers in a special issue of History and Philosophy of Logic (Taylor & Francis) http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/thplauth.asp More details will follow later. CONTACT AND INFORMATION: For further information please contact us at: computing.conference(a)ugent.be or have a look at our website: http://www.computing-conference.ugent.be

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"More Than A Craze: Photographs of NZ's early digital games scene"
by Melanie Swalwell 09 Mar '11

09 Mar '11

Hello all, I wanted to let you know about an online photographic exhibition I have co-curated on early digital games, “More than A Craze: Photographs of New Zealand’s early digital games scene”. It is now online. Blurb follows below. You will find it at http://www.maharagallery.org.nz/MoreThanACraze Kind regards, Melanie -- “More Than A Craze” is an online exhibition consisting of 46 photographs of New Zealand’s early digital games scene. Curated by Melanie Swalwell and Janet Bayly, “More Than A Craze” is one of the outcomes of Swalwell's research into the history of digital games in New Zealand, in the 1980s. The exhibition combines the work of some of New Zealand’s best known documentary photographers – Ans Westra, Christopher Matthews, Robin Morrison – with images from the archives of Wellington’s Evening Post and Auckland’s Fairfax newspapers. These photographers captured images of games, gamers and gameplay in the moment when these were novel. The exhibition website includes a short catalogue essay by Swalwell, and also a comments facility, where you are encouraged to record your impressions, memories, and recognitions. The exhibition and photographs will be of interest to people both curious and knowledgeable about the history of play and interactive entertainment, including those who are nostalgic for the old arcade days. See it at http://www.maharagallery.org.nz/MoreThanACraze -- -- Dr Melanie Swalwell Senior Lecturer, Screen and Media, & Course Coordinator, B. Media Flinders University GPO Box 2100 Adelaide SA 5001 278 Humanities Bldg Ph: +61 8 8201 2619 Fax: +61 8 8201 3635 melanie.swalwell(a)flinders.edu.au about me: http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/melanie.swalwell

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IEEE Life Members' Prize
by Medina, Eden 08 Mar '11

08 Mar '11

Dear SIGCIS Members: We are now accepting submissions for the 2011 IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History. We appreciate your help in identifying the best work published in 2010 in electrical and/or computer history. Self nominations are also welcome. Best wishes, Eden Medina Chair, IEEE Prize Committee ------------------------------------- The IEEE Life Members' Prize The IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History, supported by the IEEE Life Members' Fund and administered by the Society for the History ofTechnology, is awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology -- power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science -- published during the preceding year. Any article published in a learned periodical is eligible if it treats the art or engineering aspects of electrotechnology and its practitioners. The article must be written in English, although the journal or periodical in which it appears may be a foreign language publication. The prize consists of a cash award of $500 and a certificate. To nominate an article, please send a copy of the paper to each member of the prize committee. Deadline is April 15. For more information, please contact the committee chair or Bernie Carlson, SHOT Secretary, 434.975.2190, shot(a)virginia.edu.<mailto:shot@virginia.edu> 2011 IEEE Life Members' Prize Committee Eden Medina, chair School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University 901 E. 10th Street, Room 305 Bloomington, IN 47408 eden.medina(a)gmail.com<mailto:eden.medina@gmail.com> Ross Bassett History Dept. North Carolina State University 350 Withers Hall Campus Box 8108 Raleigh, NC 27695-8108 history485(a)gmail.com<mailto:history485@gmail.com> Mats Fridlund Associate Professor/ Universitetslektor Dept of Philosophy, Linguistics & Theory of Science University of Gothenburg Box 200, Olof Wijksgatan 6, Room T328 SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden mats.fridlund(a)gmail.com<mailto:mats.fridlund@gmail.com> -- Eden Medina Assistant Professor of Informatics Adjunct Assistant Professor of History School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington edenm(a)indiana.edu<mailto:edenm@indiana.edu> http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/edenm

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Any list members at Penn State?
by Evan Koblentz 08 Mar '11

08 Mar '11

Are any SIGCIS members based at PSU? If so, please contact me. Thank you.

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