January 2014 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Re: [SIGCIS-Members] My column on Turing and the Invention of the Computer
by Len Shustek 18 Jan '14

18 Jan '14

At 12:47 PM 1/17/2014, Thomas Haigh wrote: > > ...You may be interested in my newly published Communications of > the ACM Column "Actually, Turing Did Not Invent the Computer." > > ... I think also that the public really has room in its > collective memory for just one famous person per technology, > usually its inventor. ... There is indeed a public craving for lone heroic inventors. As an amateur historian I enjoy giving a talk whose title will make the professional historians here cringe: "Who Invented The Computer, and Why Don't You Know?". (The audience is often senior citizens. This is sometimes called the "rubber chicken circuit"; see wiki/Rubber_chicken.) You will be relieved to know that I don't answer the question. I talk about Babbage, Zuse, Turing, Atanasoff/Berry, Aiken, Eckert/Mauchly, William/Kilburn, Von Neumann, and Wilkes. All this in 50 minutes! I do confess to the audience that if I were subjected to torture and required to answer the question, I would unapologetically name Babbage as the first inventor of a computer that was never built. An excellent article, Tom, and a fun read. -- Len Dr. Leonard Shustek Chairman, Computer History Museum www.computerhistory.org

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Profile of Ian Williamson, British microcomputer pioneer
by Tony Smith 18 Jan '14

18 Jan '14

Any members with an interest in the 1970s British early microcomputer scene may wish to take a look at my interview with and profile of Ian Williamson, a (then) Cambridge Consultants electronics engineer who devised Sir Clive Sinclair's first computer product, for Science of Cambridge, the company the eventually became Sinclair Research: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/16/archaeologic_ian_williamson/ Cheers, Tony -- Tony Smith Features Editor The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk Phone: +44 (0)203 189 4611 Mobile: +44 (0)7793 440 395 Mail: The Register, First Floor, The Lightwell, 12-16 Laystall Street , London, EC1R 4PF, UK ABCe independent audit Nov 2012 for The Register: 43.66m page impressions, 7.33m unique readers.

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Were any early computers completed on schedule?
by Thomas Haigh 14 Jan '14

14 Jan '14

Hello, For my ongoing project on ENIAC I've written a sentence SEAC, another early computer, that includes the words "..although finished well behind schedule, like all early computers.". It's been suggested to me that several Colossus computers were in fact finished on schedule. Does anyone know if this is true? Also, are there any other examples of early digital computers of the 1940s or earlier reaching reliable operation more or less on the schedule promised to the people funding them? Delays to ENIAC, EDVAC, the IAS computer, ACE, Univac, the Manchester Mark 1, the Harvard Mark 1, and of course Babbage's Difference Engine are well documented. I can always change "all" to "most" but this is now making me curious. Best wishes, Tom

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FW: Were any early computers completed on schedule?
by Thomas Haigh 14 Jan '14

14 Jan '14

[Another contribution to this discussion] -----Original Message----- From: Roger Neil Barton [mailto:neil.barton@uclmail.net] Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 9:47 AM To: Ceruzzi, Paul; 'Brian Randell'; thaigh(a)computer.org Cc: members(a)sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Were any early computers completed on schedule? Tom, Just to echo Paul's comment. I joined ICL mainframe manufacturing division in West Gorton, Manchester as Financial Controller (FC) in the mid 70s. As you know ICL was a combination of Ferranti, ICT, and English Electric. West Gorton and its satellite Dukinfield were in all but name Ferranti, responsible for design and manufacture with a continuing Ferranti corporate culture. All the FCs throughout manufacturing were replaced at the same time and we all recruited from the automobile industry which operated with annual model changes. More particularly the auto industry operated with engineering changes that were documented right through the company and they wanted people used to these procedures. Finance was a very powerful function but within my team we had graduate engineers, chemists, physicists, and mathematicians and so were not really bean counters. What I found when I joined was that every machine on the shop floor was different with design engineers feeling free to come downstairs and give instructions to the shop floor personnel even retrospectively amend the design spec, but not because the customer had wanted something different. As far as the design engineers were concerned this gave the customer the benefit of their latest thinking. It had never occurred to them that these changes had cost (and therefore profit) implications. As I knew that was why I and my colleagues had been recruited I implemented a system of formal engineering changes that could be implemented at regular intervals. The 2900 range was the first range where the product could be said to be 'finished' before it began production. kind regards neil PS I don't think my submissions are accepted by sigcis so perhaps you would be kind enough to post it for me. Dr Roger Neil Barton -----Original Message----- From: Ceruzzi, Paul Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 2:01 PM To: 'Brian Randell' ; thaigh(a)computer.org Cc: <members(a)sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Were any early computers completed on schedule? Thanks, Brian. In America we would say that the Colossus is the Rodney Dangerfield of computers -- it does not get the respect it deserves. One issue that I have is that for most early computers (and complex technology in general), there was no such thing as being "finished" on a certain date. Perhaps with the exception of the Colossus, they all eased themselves into operation. So it is not clear when to assign a date of completion, as much as people want to do that. 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> -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces(a)sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian Randell Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 6:06 AM To: thaigh(a)computer.org Cc: <members(a)sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Were any early computers completed on schedule? Hi Tom: The first Colossus was built on the initiative of Tommy Flowers at the Post Office Research Station, and was completed in eleven months, becoming operational there in December 1943, before being moved to Bletchley Park where it was placed into service in early 1944. Soon after this he and his team were "asked" to make a dozen further machines, which were wanted by June 1944! This was plainly impossible, but Flowers undertook to try to get the first production, or Mark 2, Colossus ready by that date, and further ones ready at about one month intervals. (The Mark 2 Colossus machines involved a major redesign and through the use of parallelism were five times faster than the initial machine.) To quote my paper, at the 1976 Los Alamos conference on the History of Computing on Colossus: "By 31 May [the first Mark 2 Colossus] was nearly complete. Flowers, Broadhurst, Chandler, Coombs and Saville were all at Bletchley Park, but they could not get the machine to work. Eventually, in the early hours of 1 June, the others went home to get some sleep, leaving Chandler to work on, since the trouble was in the part he had redesigned. In his words, "The whole system was in a state of violent parasitic oscillation at a frequency outside the range of our oscilloscopes [and then] by way of diversion, at about 3.00 a.m. a nearby radiator started leaking, sending a pool of warm water towards the equipment!". He eventually found a means of curing the problem and at nearly 4.00 a.m. left Norman Thurlow, one of the maintenance engineers, to finish the required rewiring. The others others arrived back at 8.30 a.m. to find that the machine was working. The deadline had been beaten - and it was just five days to D-day, 6 June 1944!" [https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publicat ions/books/papers/133.pdf&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1Sb ShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=tfHMe3JuD9T32JpBQY0J1zbPYDidGqKq6g8doPfgbqs%3D%0A&s=50ad 56df86049bc505ab2fa438adf88a8bbc98d2fa7a830b33f8a8d0f4d832a3] By the end of the war, at least ten Colossi were operational at Bletchley Park. So the answer to your question about Colossus is an emphatic "yes". Cheers Brian On 13 Jan 2014, at 17:17, Thomas Haigh <thaigh(a)computer.org> wrote: > Hello, > > For my ongoing project on ENIAC I've written a sentence SEAC, another > early computer, that includes the words "..although finished well > behind schedule, like all early computers.". > > It's been suggested to me that several Colossus computers were in fact > finished on schedule. Does anyone know if this is true? > > Also, are there any other examples of early digital computers of the > 1940s or earlier reaching reliable operation more or less on the > schedule promised to the people funding them? Delays to ENIAC, EDVAC, > the IAS computer, ACE, Univac, the Manchester Mark 1, the Harvard > Mark 1, and of course Babbage's Difference Engine are well documented. > > I can always change "all" to "most" but this is now making me curious. > > Best wishes, > > Tom > _______________________________________________ > This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion > list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://sigcis.org/pipermail > /members/&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3 > D%3D%0A&m=tfHMe3JuD9T32JpBQY0J1zbPYDidGqKq6g8doPfgbqs%3D%0A&s=f690d2ac > f540987161177494b600f31f714a1e9c56325a0d9a5bff580c659217 > and you can change your subscription options > athttp://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 URL = https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/br ian.randell&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D %0A&m=tfHMe3JuD9T32JpBQY0J1zbPYDidGqKq6g8doPfgbqs%3D%0A&s=5e9d6121e7337ec2f3 c2b2d664f11bade94a477a2e4bdb77c3179bf0126e010e _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://sigcis.org/pipermail/membe rs/&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=tf HMe3JuD9T32JpBQY0J1zbPYDidGqKq6g8doPfgbqs%3D%0A&s=f690d2acf540987161177494b6 00f31f714a1e9c56325a0d9a5bff580c659217 and you can change your subscription options at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinf o/members&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0 A&m=tfHMe3JuD9T32JpBQY0J1zbPYDidGqKq6g8doPfgbqs%3D%0A&s=59057792990f3e3ec392 911c37beb4c32e654ea83171359a5173d3f27030b4b1 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members(a)sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

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The Sinclair QL - aka Quantum Leap - is 30 years old
by Tony Smith 14 Jan '14

14 Jan '14

Any members with an interest in early 1980s microcomputers may want to take a look at my in-depth history of the Sinclair QL, aka the ZX83. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/12/archaeologic_sinclair_ql/ Tony Smith Features Editor The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk Phone: +44 (0)203 189 4611 Mobile: +44 (0)7793 440 395 Mail: The Register, First Floor, The Lightwell, 12-16 Laystall Street , London, EC1R 4PF, UK ABCe independent audit Nov 2012 for The Register: 7.33m unique readers, 43.66m page impressions Preliminary audit Nov 2013: 9.47m unique readers, 44.07m page impressions

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New blog post on Navajo women and IC technology
by Dag Spicer 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Dear SIGCIS Friends, We have a great blog post out today from Professor Lisa Nakamura of the University of Michigan. http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/indigenous-circuits/ Comments are encouraged! Best, Dag About Lisa Nakamura: Lisa Nakamura is Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures and American Cultures and Asian Pacific Island Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (University of Minnesota Press: winner of the Asian American Studies Association 2010 book award in cultural studies), Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Race in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2000) and Race After the Internet (Routledge, 2011). Nakamura has written most recently on how reading platforms such as Goodreads press readers into performing identities as readers in networked forums in PMLA, January 2013. She is writing a new monograph on social inequality in digital media culture, entitled “Workers Without Bodies: Towards a Theory of Race and Digital Labor.” She serves on the editorial boards of the journal of visual culture, New Media and Society, Journal of Asian American Studies, Games and Culture, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture. -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd Mountain View, CA 94043 650.810.1035 direct 650.810.1055 fax Follow Us: CHM Blog I Facebook I Twitter I YouTube

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CBI and ACM fellowship deadlines --> 15 January
by Thomas J. Misa 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Hi all, Just a reminder that there are several fellowship deadlines on **Wednesday** of this week. Hope that you are developing great projects, and can keep the funding streams healthy . . . and your research active! * CBI--Tomash fellowship <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/tfellowship.html>. Pre-doctoral fellowship in computer history. * CBI--Norberg travel grants <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/ntravelfund.html>. Travel grants to use research collections at CBI. * ACM History Committee research fellowships "up to four projects with awards of up to $4,000 each"<http://history.acm.org/public/public_documents/acm_history_fellowship_annou…>. Please make sure to specify your research project's connection to ACM history. * ACM archiving workshop <http://history.acm.org/public/public_documents/acm_hc_2014.php> to be held at CBI this May 21-22. Projects that are /creating/ archives related to ACM history (organization, conferences, journals, SIGs, notable people) are the focus here. Best, Tom

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public controversy re cover of an AI journal
by Sharon Traweek 10 Jan '14

10 Jan '14

Note the controversy being reported by BBC, Agence France-Presse, Asahi Shimbun, and other newspapers around the world concerning the cover for the Jan 2014 issue of the JSAI Journal, Vol 29, no.1, 2014 http://www.ai-gakkai.or.jp/en/vol29_no1/ http://ci.nii.ac.jp/vol_issue/nels/AN10067140_en.html JSAI is a journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (Jinkou Chinou Gakkai) http://www.ai-gakkai.or.jp/ http://www.ai-gakkai.or.jp/en “Robotics journal cover draws accusations of stereotyping women,” Asahi Shimbun, 9 January 2014 http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201401090058 “Japan Artificial Intelligence society apologizes for boneheaded glimpse of the future: a wired maid,” Agence France-Presse, 10 January 2014 http://www.interaksyon.com/article/78417/japan-artificial-intelligence-soci… “Japan: Artificial servant girl sparks sexism row,” BBC, 10 January 2014 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-25680951 The Asahi Shimbun article includes a quotation from Hideyuki Hirakawa, STS, Osaka University http://hideyukihirakawa.com/index-e.html

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James Pelkey's History of Computer Communications, 1968-1988
by Andrew Russell 07 Jan '14

07 Jan '14

Colleagues - I invite you to take a look at Jim Pelkey's website/book, "Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications, 1968-1988," available from http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/. Many chapters of this book have been online for a few years, but the final chapter is now posted and the narrative of the book is complete. In my view, there are a few aspects of Pelkey's work that set it apart from other accounts of computer communications and networking in these crucial decades. First, and most striking, Pelkey's narrative stops in 1988 - a time when the future of internetworking was far from settled. Because his account does not end with the explosion of the Internet, the dot-com boom in the 1990s, etc., it invites readers to ponder "what if" questions and to think more deeply about why the Internet emerged victorious from its competition with OSI. Second, the book's sources and units of analysis are different from existing accounts of computer networking (including my own work). As an investor in the 1980s, Pelkey was able to interview many protagonists of computer communications, collect market research, and focus on these events from a market perspective to explain what companies were making networking and internetworking equipment, what their customers wanted to do with it, and why there was so much churn in the industry. Readers can explore Pelkey's material through various market sectors (http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/MarketSectors/ExploreByMark…) or through different types of organizations (http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/Organizations/Organizations…) Third, the book honors the non-linear, hypertext spirit of the web. As Pelkey writes in his introduction, "To recreate a sense of the uncertainty each person or organization faced, as well as to give the reader the freedom to explore the history as fit one’s interest, the reconstruction assumed the form of a series of overlapping hypertext blocks organized within time. While this format provides a rich context for reader exploration, it does not lend itself to being published as a traditional book. Thus this website. I invite you to explore and come to your own conclusions as to what happened and why." There is much more to be said about this impressive body of research and writing - not to mention the historical events that it documents! - but I'll stop here. The 80 interviews that Pelkey conducted, most of them in 1988, are now at the Computer History Museum. So far there are transcripts of 10 interviews available on the website (including interviews with Licklider, Donald Davies, Bernard Strassberg, and Bob Metcalfe); it is my understanding that more transcripts will be available soon. The CHM (through Marc Weber, curator of its Internet History Program) has agreed to maintain the book permanently from the "Special Projects" menu at its website, http://www.computerhistory.org/explore/. For now, you can access it directly from http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/. Enjoy, and I am sure that Jim would be very happy to read your comments - his email appears above in the cc line. Cheers, Andy

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Fwd: 25-years-internet-netherlands
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 07 Jan '14

07 Jan '14

This might be of interest > http://waag.org/en/news/25-years-internet-netherlands > best wishes Bernardo (Bangor University, Wales)

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