October 2025 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Conference "Computer in Deutschland", November 7th-8th, Paderborn (Germany)
by Martin Schmitt 16 Feb '26

16 Feb '26

Dear SIGCIS, I hope everyone of you returned home safely from Luxembourg last week. It was awesome to see so many of you there at SHOT. So many good panels on the history of computing! Who still hasn’t enough (and is able to understand German), I just wanted to invite you to a conference on „Computer in Germany. New perspectives in History of Computing and Computer Archeology“. ("Computer in Deutschland“) The conference takes place on the of the 100th anniversary of Heinz Nixdorf in Paderborn, Germany, on November 7th-8th. I’m co-organizing the conference with my colleague Stefan Höltgen with the support of the Historical Institute Paderborn, the German Society for Computer Science (GI) and the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, on of the largest computer museums in the world. Conference language is German, the conference is free. Please find attached the program and the poster. Best Martin Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter | digital enthusiast UNIVERSITÄT PADERBORN Historisches Institut Zeitgeschichte, Neuere & Neuste Geschichte, Digital History https://www.uni-paderborn.de/person/100968 Tel.: +49 5251 60-2428 Zuletzt erschienen: Schmitt, Martin: „Socialist AI? Societal Use, Economic Implementation, and the Tensions of Applied Computer Science in Late Socialist GDR“, in: IEEE Annals Hist. Comput. (2023), S. 66-79.

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Simon Lavington
by James Sumner 29 Dec '25

29 Dec '25

Dear SIGCIS The death was announced last week <https://www.facebook.com/TNMOC/videos/it-is-with-great-sadness-that-the-nat…> of Professor Simon Lavington, one of the earliest and most prolific of British computer historians. Originally trained as an electrical engineer, Simon Lavington was a graduate student in the University of Manchester's emerging Department of Computer Science under Tom Kilburn in the 1960s. His historical research, mostly in the internal machine-history tradition, developed alongside an academic career in computer science and systems design at Manchester and the University of Essex, and expanded after his official retirement in 2002. His first book, the short illustrated study /A History of Manchester Computers/ (1975; 2nd ed., 1998), was followed by /Early British Computers /(1980), a technical survey of the hardware industry's development; /The Pegasus Story/ (2000), a machine history; and two detailed studies of British manufacturers, /Moving Targets: Elliott-Automation and the Dawn of the Computer Age /(2011) and /Early Computing in Britain: Ferranti Ltd and Government Funding/ (2019). He also edited the multi-authored work /Alan Turing and his Contemporaries/ (2012, with Chris Burton, Martin Campbell-Kelly and Roger Johnson). His published articles include a description of the high-speed text analysis machine Oedipus, developed secretly for the intelligence service GCHQ in the 1950s and loosely descended from the Bletchley Park Colossus project (/Annals/, 2006: doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2006.34 <https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2006.34>) and a short biography of Dina Vaughan/St Johnston, whose company Vaughan Programming Services was a defining influence on the concept of the independent software house (/Computer Journal/, 2009: doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxn019 <https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxn019>). He was also the digital archivist for the Computer Conservation Society, where he co-ordinated the Our Computer Heritage <https://www.ourcomputerheritage.org/> project. In 2024 he was awarded an honorary fellowship of the National Museum of Computing, and he remained active in research and commemorative activities to the end of his life. His papers <https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/fcb6b66a-adc2-38f1-a409-0bc6…> are held at the University of Manchester Library. Best wishes James

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available now for pre-order: Other Networks / A Radical Technology Sourcebook
by Lori Emerson 21 Nov '25

21 Nov '25

Dear all, At long last, my beloved book, Other Networks:A Radical Technology Sourcebook, is officially available from Anthology Editions for pre-order here<https://shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898-lori-emerson-other-networks-a-r…>! Sadly, despite publishing many beautifully designed art books, the publisher won’t be around for much longer which means there are only 1000 copies available of Other Networks. If you think you’d like a copy, consider pre-ordering as soon as you can manage it. With deep gratitude to my editor Mark Iosifescu<https://iosifescu.biz/>, book cover designer Robert Beatty<https://robertbeattyart.com/>, and interior book designer Ella Gold<https://ellagold.com/>, Other Networks catalogs 80+ networks that preceded or existed outside of the internet. It is also an educational project that comes out of my belief that we are all capable both of understanding networks from the past and of building alternative networks for the future; a love letter to experimental art and technology; and a liberatory guide for escaping the corporate present. The design brilliantly both recalls the long history of telecommunications networks (exemplified by late 19th century/early 20th century telegraph and telephone manuals) and rewrites that same history to have a more global perspective and to include more women; Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; and artist experiments with/on these pre-internet networks. Below is the table of contents. I have also posted on my blog excerpts from or expanded versions of entries on microbroadcasting<https://loriemerson.net/2024/09/21/the-history-of-microbroadcasting-and-how…>, barbed wire fence phones<https://loriemerson.net/2024/08/31/a-brief-history-of-barbed-wire-fence-tel…>, and imaginary networks<https://loriemerson.net/2025/01/04/brief-notes-toward-activating-the-potent…>. Sincerely, Lori (Emerson) *** Chronological List of Networks<https://loriemerson.net/2024/03/15/chronological-list-of-networks-in-other-…> Chronological List of Network Experiments<https://loriemerson.net/2024/03/15/chronological-list-of-network-experiment…> Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction Wireless Networks: Sound Networks [1] Drums [2] Whistling Air Networks [3] Fire or Smoke Signals [4] Pneumatic Tubes [5] Skywriting Water Networks [6] Hydraulic Semaphore Optical Networks [7] Flag Signaling [8] Optical Telegraph [9] Infrared Communication [10] Signal Lamp [11] Heliograph [12] Photophone [13] Ultraviolet Communication [14] Laser Communication [15] Visible Light Communication Radio Networks [16] Amateur Radio [16.1] Radiotelegraphy [16.2] Radioteletype [16.3] Amateur Television [16.4] Hellschreiber [16.5] Earth-Moon-Earth Communication [16.6] Amateur Radio Satellite [16.7] Amateur Packet Radio [17] Radio Broadcast [18] Pirate Radio [19] Radiofax [20] Two-Way Radio [21] Pager [22] Meteor Burst Communication [23] Slow Scan Television [24] Project West Ford [25] Pirate Television [26] Packet Radio Network [27] Microbroadcast [28] Software Defined Radio [29] Wi-Fi [30] Bluetooth Microwave Networks [31] Microwave Radio-Relay [32] Communications Satellite Wired Networks: Electrical Wire Networks [33] Electrical telegraph [33.1] Electrical Printing Telegraph [33.2] Image Telegraph [33.3] Fire Alarm Telegraph [33.4] Pantelegraph [33.5] Telephonic Telegraph [34] Telephone [35] Wired Radio [36] Telautograph [37] Telefacsimile [38] Videophone [39] Telex Barbed Wire Networks [40] Barbed Wire Telegraph [41] Fence Phones Hybrid Networks: [42] Library [43] Book [44] Postal System [44.1] Pigeon Post [44.2] Projectile Post [44.3] Balloon Mail [44.4] Pony Express [44.5] Airgraph and V-Mail [44.6] Email Letter [45] Sneakernet [46] Radio Broadcast Network [47] Broadcast Television [48] Cable Television [48.1] NABU [49] Cellular Network [50] Time-Sharing Network [51] Teletext [52] Videotex Imaginary Networks: [53] Necromancy [54] Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compass [55] Telephonoscope [56] Telepathy [57] Ley Lines [58] Mundaneum [59] World Brain [60] Memex [61] Faster-Than-Light Communication Networks [62] Project Xanadu [63] Metaverse [64] The Clacks [65] Pandoran Neural Network [66] Cosmic Internet -- “I use technology in order to hate it properly.” — Nam June Paik Lori Emerson | KF0LCB | she/her/they/them Associate Professor | Associate Chair Graduate Studies | Director, Media Archaeology Lab Media Studies Department | University Colorado Boulder Traditional territories of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook<https://shop.mexicansummer.com/merch/495898-lori-emerson-other-networks-a-r…> Mastodon<https://post.lurk.org/@loriemerson> | Bluesky<https://bsky.app/profile/loriemerson.net> | loriemerson.net<http://loriemerson.net/> | mediaarchaeologylab.com<http://mediaarchaeologylab.com/>

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[REMINDER] CFP: Special Issue on Feminist Archaeologies of Desktop Media
by Veronika Hanáková 10 Nov '25

10 Nov '25

Dear SIGCIS members, I’d like to highlight this call for papers that may be of interest to you: *Special Issue on Feminist Archaeologies of Desktop Media* The 21st century has witnessed a boom in media formats that creatively inhabit the seemingly familiar space of the computer (or smartphone) desktop. Simulated clicks, swipes, and multitasking across windows and apps on the screen have become central to emerging artistic forms variously referred to as “desktop cinema,” “desktop documentary,” and “screenlife.” These formats not only play with screen-based aesthetics but also mediate lived experiences of labor, surveillance, communication, and self-fashioning—often through identity-based and affectively charged engagements with the interface. Yet, despite the emergence of several scholarly publications on the topic (e.g., Kiss 2021; Anger and Lee 2023; De Rosa 2024) and the use of desktop formats in videographic criticism and practice-based research (e.g., Lee 2014; Galibert-Laîné 2019; Bird 2023; Zecchi 2023; Lacurie 2024), there is a need for collective reflection on the desktop itself: as a representational space, a material interface, and a historically conditioned technology embedded in overlapping histories of gender, race, affect, and domestic labor. To address this gap, the special issue brings *media archaeology and feminist media history into direct dialogue*. Media archaeology offers critical tools for tracing how desktop media engage with and shape the evolution of the graphical user interface (GUI), and how they resonate with earlier technological practices—from desktop publishing to early computer video editing systems (e.g., Ernst 2021; Gaboury 2021; Distelmeyer 2022; Hanáková 2024). At the same time, recent interventions by feminist media historians provide strategies for denaturalizing the desktop through feminist, queer, and anti-racist perspectives on labor, domesticity, and authorship (e.g., Nooney 2023; Moretti 2023; Hilu 2024; Nakamura 2025). Together, these frameworks showcase a generative methodological tandem to interrogate how desktop media inherit, extend, or critique earlier promises of democratization, user-centered design, and interactivity. Crucially, they allow us to ask: What kinds of subjectivity have these formats invited, enabled, marginalized, or repressed? We invite scholars, artists, archivists, and curators *to submit works that seek out diverse histories of desktop media practices*—practices too often seen as exclusively contemporary. Building on the momentum sparked by the 2023 collection of videographic essays published in Feminist Media Histories, this special issue aims to create space for both written and practice-based archaeologies of desktop media formats. You can read the CFP here. <https://online.ucpress.edu/DocumentLibrary/Feminist_Archaeologies_of_Deskto…> Potential areas of contribution include, but are not limited to: - Desktop Documentary - Desktop Horror - Desktop and Video Platforms - Desktop and Computer History - Desktop and Useful Media - Desktop and Preservation - Desktop and Domesticity - Desktop and Liveness - Desktop and Labor - Desktop and Hardware - Desktop and Pedagogy - Global Desktop - Desktop and AI *Proposals should be roughly 500 words (including 3–5 references),* include a short bio, *and be submitted no later than October 28, 2025 *to Jiří Anger (j.anger(a)qmul.ac.uk) and Veronika Hanáková ( veronika.hanakovaxp(a)gmail.com) *Please state clearly whether you plan to submit an article or a video essay. *Contributors will be notified by November 28, 2025; essays will be due to editors by June 28, 2026 and then will be sent out for anonymous peer review. All the best, Veronika Hanáková and Jiří Anger -- Veronika Hanáková *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* DVD Enthusiast Gimmicky Media Artifact Finder *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* *Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media* <https://www.screenworks.org.uk/archive> Associate Editor

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A new book on the influence of the computer on the sciences
by Hashagen, Ulf 28 Oct '25

28 Oct '25

A book that Rudolf Seising and I edited and just published by Springer may be of interest to some of you: "Algorithmische Wissenskulturen: Der Einfluss des Computers auf die Wissenschaftsentwicklung" (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-35560-9) Ulf Hashagen ---- PD Dr. Ulf Hashagen Leitung / Head Forschungsinstitut für Technik- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte / The Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology Deutsches Museum Museumsinsel 1 80538 München / Munich Germany Tel. +49/(0)89/2179-453 Fax +49/(0)89/2179-239 E-mail: u.hashagen(a)deutsches-museum.de<mailto:u.hashagen@deutsches-museum.de> https://www.deutsches-museum.de/forschung/person/ulf-hashagen-2

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers
by thomas.haigh＠gmail.com 22 Oct '25

22 Oct '25

Thanks James and Brian, You are stimulating me to write a little more! The famous for being forgotten thing was a central thread in my CACM article “Innovators Assemble” prompted by the odd spectacle of Walter Isaacson claiming to rescue Ada Lovelace and the Women of ENIAC from obscurity. https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/innovators-assemble/ It obviously depends on where you set the benchmark for obscurity, and as Isaacson has spent his career writing about the most famous men in history probably anyone who isn’t Steve Jobs. Elon Musk, or Benjamin Franklin barely registers. Once Jeremy Clarkson has fronted a documentary about you, complete with historical reenactment, perhaps you are not forgotten anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTsHnxS5bg0 This appears to be a different documentary from the one James linked to, which gives you a sense of how large the story has come to loom. I like the “loan genius tax”. It’s true that the article is less in thrall to this narrative than the framing but there are subtle ways in which the standard version of the story skews things towards the template of the heroic outsider fighting blinkered elites. Anyone who cares about this can compare the narrative here to our discussion in “Contextualizing Colossus” but the archival evidence for Colossus having being opposed by Newman or even Welshman at Bletchley Park is weak. We found the idea that development of the Robinson machines was part of an incremental and coordinated program towards the development of Colossus much more convincing than the conventional story that Colossus was a rival project conducted in secret. Here, as with other versions of the standard narrative, the timeline isn’t compatible with archival evidence. Specifically, Smith’s suggestion that “ten months of working around the clock” on Colossus started in “February 1943” from a decision made “in response” to having “improved Newman’s design for Heath Robinson and overs[een] its manufacture” just don’t fit with any possible arrangement of dates on a calendar. At least the Guardian article doesn’t repeat claims that Flowers paid for Colossus materials himself, or that he later sought a small business loan from the bank of England to build ”another machine like Colossus” which is utterly absurd for many reasons but still features on his Wikpedia pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers Even if you assume that Flowers saw a potential market for startup companies selling cryptanalytic equipment there’s the problem of seeking a small business loan from a central bank. I suppose whoever wrote this thought the Bank of England was something like the Bank of America. The other historical box Flowers is being forced into here is “father of the computer.” As well as the general problems with this title, there’s a special irony that Flowers didn’t care about computers. For example, Smith mentions that Turing had an unfair advantage in becoming famous because “Turing went to the National Physical Laboratory in London, where he built the most sophisticated computer of the immediate postwar years, the ACE.” But, as we document in the IEEE Annals biography of Flowers, a contract to build ACE was given to Flowers’ group at Dollis Hill after the war but they finished up backing out of it to work on telephone exchanges. Flowers also seems to have played some part in the MOSAIC computer project, which provided another possible but untaken path into a computing career. We somehow find it hard to believe that a telephone engineer wanted to build communications systems rather than computers. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356180 I do feel that Colossus itself has similarly been shoehorned into the box of “first computer” as a result of coming to light during the 1970s thanks to the efforts of Brian Randell (who notably goes unmentioned in Smith’s piece) just as history of computing was emerging as a field of study. At that point integrating it into the developing conversation about the “first computer” was the obvious and only way to argue for its historical importance. Also because primary sources describing its capabilities were still not available much vagueness remained around its actual capabilities. We argued in “Colossus and Programmability” that it wasn’t a programmable computer, but something more like a configurable digital signal processor. This makes it easier to understand why Flowers didn’t try to move into computing after the war. Though there was more than that going on because Colossus was digital and Flowers’ later career was marked by a determination to stick with analog electronics for telephone exchanges. I also talk about that in the Flowers biography. Flowers himself noted the “irony of recent events which credit me with some pioneering work on computers, when it was my refusal to use a computer when everyone else said it was the right thing to do that which led to my downfall in the telephone industry.” So Flowers very much did not, as Smith claimed, attempt “to persuade the Post Office to modernise with the technology he pioneered.” Flowers was unmistakably bitter about the way his postwar career went and shared this with interviewers, in ways that sometimes distorted what happened during the war into a story of blanket resistance to electronics. Methodologically, an issue that comes up here and in other places where we brush up against entrenched narratives is the proper use of oral history. I’ve been struck here, and more so in my work on ENIAC and with computer scientists, by the general assumption that statements from the people involved (or even from people who knew them) are the most reliable evidence, even when recorded forty or fifty years later. So the benefits of history based on archival primary sources seems to be less obvious than we might hope. Smith himself put more weight on a phone conversation with an elderly niece than on professional scholarship and apparently did not come across the biography in Annals. Best wishes, Tom Thomas Haigh Professor & Chair, UWM History Department Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project See more at <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom> www.tomandmaria.com/Tom From: Members <members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org <mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> > On Behalf Of James Sumner via Members Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 3:20 AM To: members(a)lists.sigcis.org <mailto:members@lists.sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers The "forgotten hero" trope is interesting. It's a good media hook, and it doesn't obey common logic. Very often, publicising a "forgotten hero" doesn't force a revision of the perceived forgotten-ness, but actually intensifies it. This effect can't go on indefinitely, but its limits are only occasionally reached: Alan Turing is an example. Since The Imitation Game came out in 2014, the narrative "once forgotten, now recognised" has become dominant. Yet I remember there were still "forgotten" narratives appearing as late as the centenary commemorations in 2012, at which point Turing was already one of the most famous scientific figures in history. Tommy Flowers, who was honoured in his lifetime and has received about as many formal tributes and commemorations as any other important innovator in his home country, looks set to remain one of the famous forgotten. It's not a case of being known to specialists but not the general public: he makes a good public hero, fitting the narrative of skilled working man made good that was laid down in Dava Sobel's Longitude, and it's usually for general audiences that his significance is being newly discovered at any given date. Notably, he was – alongside Bill Tutte, likewise a permanent revelation – the subject of a 2011 BBC documentary on "Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes <https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/7fd3fb55e462db0867b183729c5ed27c> ". The comment here (#17) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Ftv%2…> from a 2011 viewer describing it as "a better-late-than-never tribute" sums up the general air of a historical wrong finally righted. The odd thing is that the new piece by Andrew Smith <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-th…> that re-rights this wrong is, for most of its length, relatively attentive to the scale and complexity of the project and the inappropriateness of "lone hero" judgments. With two or three exceptions, the problematic framing is confined to the first two paragraphs – though these, of course, are what prime the reader's response. It sometimes feels like the "forgotten hero" hook is a tax writers pay in order to be allowed to deliver the detail. I was interested to see a letter from Jonathan Michie <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/17/the-teamwork-behind-blet…> , son of Donald, responding to Smith's piece. He points out – as is also clear from the piece shared by Morten – that Flowers himself framed innovation as a group and incremental effort, and ties this understanding to a defence of broad humanistic education against the "relevant skills only" approach, which certainly relies on the assumption that heroic innovators Just Are. Best James On 20/10/2025 21:08, Morten Bay via Members wrote: Just adding this to Thomas's list, in case someone less steeped in this particular history joins later and wants even more sources. Here are Flowers' own words on the subject from 1983 (IEEE is down right now, likely due to the AWS outage): https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5488650/4640706/04640709.pdf [ieeexplore.ieee.org] <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5488650/4640706…> /Morten Morten Bay, Ph.D. Lecturer Research fellow, Center for the Digital Future Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism University of Southern California On Oct 20, 2025 at 12:56 PM -0700, thomas.haigh--- via Members <mailto:members@lists.sigcis.org> <members(a)lists.sigcis.org>, wrote: The Guardian piece is nicely written, but I sighed a little to see another retelling of the story that adds nothing new. There’s also something ironic in attempting to challenge the long genius myth of Turing by squeezing Flowers himself into The Guardian piece is nicely written, but I sighed a little to see another retelling of the story that adds nothing new. There’s also something ironic in attempting to challenge the long genius myth of Turing by squeezing Flowers himself into the lone genius narrative template as “the real father of computing.” So as a PSA for the work I did a few years ago with Mark Priestley on this topic, those looking to learn more might consult: 1. Contextualizing Colossus. That’s the organizational side of the story in Technology & Culture, based in the archival materials, focused on the relationship between Bletchley Park and Dollis Hill. The clearest effort to pull back from individuals to look at this as an institutional relationship. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/763592 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/muse.jhu.edu/article/763592__;!!LIr3w8kk…> 2. Colossus and Programmability. From IEEE Annals, this one digs in to the questions of whether Colossus was programmable and whether it was a computer. There’s a British stamp that says it was both, but we conclude it was neither. But we couldn’t find an existing definition of “programmable” so we had to grapple with what that even meant at the time. https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/04/08509146/17D45WgziNe <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/0…> 3. Tommy Flowers biography from IEEE Annals. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356180 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356180__;!…> 4. Colossus Genius: Tutte, Flowers, and a Bad Imitation of Turing. One of the my CACM contributions, written in a more general way and also taking aim at the Imitation Game movie. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3018994 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3018994__;!!LIr3w…> 5. Colossus the Missing Manual. That’s the technical report with the in-depth description of the Colossus architecture, its sequence of operations and what all the controls did. There are also several documented Colossus configurations. https://mediarep.org/entities/book/f1548ef2-2420-4c93-9b09-4fadcc847bd3 <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mediarep.org/entities/book/f1548ef2-2420…> Perhaps unsurprisingly the world mostly shrugged at these and went on with the ritual retelling of the story of snubbed genius. It was nice, though, making my first visit to Bletchley Park earlier this year to have the chance to introduce myself to the volunteer Colossus operators who turned out to have been making extensive use of the Missing Manual. Rather a specialized audience, but a committed one! Best wishes, Tom Thomas Haigh Professor & Chair, UWM History Department Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project See more at <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.tomandmaria.com/Tom__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!…> www.tomandmaria.com/Tom From: Members <mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> <members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of Dag Spicer via Members Sent: Monday, October 20, 2025 12:49 PM To: members(a)lists.sigcis.org <mailto:members@lists.sigcis.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers A great story… Flowers’ career was full of brilliant inventions. <image001.jpg> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/mo…> Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/mo…> theguardian.com Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/info.computerhistory.org/subscribe__;!!L…> _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigci… <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis…> [lists[.]sigcis[.]org] and you can change your subscription options at https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-si… <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sig…> [lists[.]sigcis[.]org]

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Joel Mokyr: Nobel Prize in Economics
by Ceruzzi, Paul 22 Oct '25

22 Oct '25

You probably saw the announcement that Joel Mokyr, of Northwestern Univ., won the Nobel Prize in economics. In the citation, the Nobel Ccommittee recognized his study of the history of technology to support his views. In the early days of SHOT, I recall Mokyr attending at least one, perhaps several, sessions at the annual meetings, where he gave papers or chaired a session. I don't recall details, but the fact that I attended his sessions implies that he was discussing issues related to the history of computing. Note that "computing" in those days meant mainframes and punched cards. Perhaps some of you can help me out if you have an archive of previous SHOT meetings. Best, Paul Ceruzzi

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Tommy Flowers
by Dag Spicer 21 Oct '25

21 Oct '25

A great story… Flowers’ career was full of brilliant inventions. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-th…> [2988.jpg] Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-th…> theguardian.com<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-th…> Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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THE EXCEPTIONAL SALE
by E. Lazard 21 Oct '25

21 Oct '25

For those of you with a little money on the side, don’t miss the Christie’s auction in Paris on November the 18th. An ENIGMA machine will be available for around €250,000. https://press.christies.com/the-exceptional-sale-br-br-362832 This should leave you enough money to raise the bid for the PASCALINE the following day, still in Paris. After all, what’s 2 to 3 millions when you can touch history… https://press.christies.com/la-pascaline-1642 Emmanuel

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AHA Book Prize Winner
by Dag Spicer 16 Oct '25

16 Oct '25

The American Historical Association<https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/american-historical-associa…> has just announced the winner of the Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize in the History of Journalism: Ira Chinoy (Univ. of Maryland) for Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting (Potomac Books, 2024). We had the immense good fortune to have Ira here at the Computer History Museum at CHM for a Member’s Reception and Book Talk back in July, 2024. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo> [maxresdefault.jpg] CHM Live | Predicting the President: Origins of Computer Forecasting<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo> youtube.com<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCw2_qFSNmo> CHM is the global home for high-quality history of computing scholarship, events and programs. Bravo Ira! Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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