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CBI Newsletter - Spring 2019 issue
by Charles Babbage Institute 09 Jul '19

09 Jul '19

Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota Dear CBI Newsletter reader: The Spring 2019 issue (Volume 41, Number 1) of the Charles Babbage Institute Newsletter is now available. Please follow one of the links below to view it. HTML: http://www.cbi.umn.edu/newsletter.html PDF: http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/nsl/v41n1.pdf * * * * * * The CBI Newsletter is published semi-annually. If you wish to have your email address removed from the notification list, please send an email message to cbi(a)umn.edu with "newsletter unsubscribe" in the subject line.

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Invitation - HSS Collections, Archives, Libraries, and Museums Caucus (CALM)
by Benjamin Gross 08 Jul '19

08 Jul '19

Hello all, This invitation might be of interest to those attending the History of Science Society's upcoming meeting in Utrecht. Best wishes from Kansas City, -Ben Gross Benjamin Gross, PhD Vice President for Research and Scholarship Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology 5109 Cherry Street Kansas City, Missouri 64110 816.926.8718 grossb(a)lindahall.org<mailto:grossb@lindahall.org> www.lindahall.org<http://www.lindahall.org/> You are cordially invited to the inaugural meeting of The Collections, Archives, Libraries, and Museums (CALM) Caucus at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society Friday, July 26, 2019 12:00-13:00, Drift 21, Rm. 006 Utrecht, the Netherlands The Collections, Archives, Libraries, and Museums Caucus aims to provide a space for scholars interested in the history of collection-based institutions or efforts to mobilize collections to explore the history of science, technology, and medicine in new and creative ways. The CALM Caucus will also serve as a venue where experienced professionals can provide guidance and support to scholars seeking to pursue careers as curators, librarians, or archivists. In this organizational meeting, the CALM Caucus will focus on gauging broader interest in these topics and how best to address them at future HSS conferences. For further information, contact Pedro Raposo (praposo(a)adlerplanetarium.org<mailto:praposo@adlerplanetarium.org>) or Ben Gross (grossb(a)lindahall.org<mailto:grossb@lindahall.org>).

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Announcing Launch Issue of ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories
by Laine Nooney 01 Jul '19

01 Jul '19

Hi all, I'm very delighted to announce the launch issue of *ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories*, cofounded by myself, Henry Lowood, and Raiford Guins. *ROMchip *is an online, hybrid-audience scholarly journal, a platform designed for the advancement of critical historical studies of games (digital, electronic, and analog). You can check out our first issue here <http://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/index> You can read our newsletter here <https://mailchi.mp/78bdc0c8e2d6/romchip01> You can learn more about *ROMchip *here <http://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/about> *ROMchip *is also accepting content! We publish traditional peer reviewed articles, interviews and oral histories, and "object lesson"-style short essays on historic game artifacts. You can learn more about our content types at our FAQ <http://romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/faq>. We are open to submissions from scholars across all disciplines, as well as independent researchers, journalists, designers, enthusiasts--anyone invested in taking games seriously. Cheers, Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/> MCC <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/> @ NYU <http://www.nyu.edu/> Assistant Professor -Need to make an appt? Click, don't email: https://bit.ly/2GIHuK0 -Probably typed by voice recognition, so please cherish typos

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Interest in late-forming SIGCIS panel on material object approaches to computing history?
by Andrew Meade McGee 11 Jun '19

11 Jun '19

Dear SIG-CIS folks, Andrew Meade McGee from Carnegie Mellon here. I've been having an interesting conversation on material object history in regards to computing with Alana Staiti of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and we thought we might gauge from the list possible interest in a late-forming panel for the fall 2019 SIG-CIS workshop. The deadline is tight before the June 15th submission, so consider this a fishing expedition to see if anyone would be interested in a panel on these themes for the Milan conference. Thanks for considering this call for interest. Panel organizers: Alana Staiti (Smithsonian National Museum of American History) and Andrew Meade McGee (Carnegie Mellon University). For more information or to propose a paper topic, please e-mail amcgee(a)andrew.cmu.edu. Should enough interest coalesce, the organizers would submit a panel proposal on June 15th. Authors who wish to propose a paper for the panel should e-mail the organizers by June 13th, including an abstract of no more than 400 words and a one-page CV. Working title: *Second Life: Unexpected Object Lessons and the Materiality of Computer History * When historians talk about the “materiality” of computing, what exactly is the material in question? Scholars have explored the materiality of information in various ways, treating technologies, infrastructures, landscapes, and workspaces as material components that comprise the worlds of computing, past and present. This panel takes a closer look at a specific approach to materiality, one whose central theme comprises object-based analysis and attention paid to the “social lives” of things, to borrow a phrase from anthropologist Arjun Appadurai. What does the “physical” mean in our historical consideration of an information age, and how do our changing interpretations of and relationships with material objects redefine our approaches to computing? The panel organizers welcome papers whose themes include: * object-based studies * software and its materiality (or immateriality) * authenticity and reproducibility * preservation, value, and heritage * institutional critique * public and private histories of material artifacts * physicality as revealed or hidden in computer history * limits and constraints on models of materiality * materiality, immateriality, and personhood * maintenance, repair, technological afterlives and physicality * navigating objects as archives * materiality from the perspective of designers and users

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REMINDER: 2019 SIGCIS Conference Abstracts Due June 15
by Laine Nooney 10 Jun '19

10 Jun '19

Dear SIGCIS Community, This is a friendly reminder that abstracts for our upcoming 2019 conference are due this Saturday, June 15. Details below! ------------------------------------------------------------------- The SIGCIS Conference Organizing Committee is pleased to *announce the CFP for our 2019 SIGCIS Conference, **EXCEPTION ERROR: Fatal, Illegal, Unknown*. Our keynote for the event is Safiya U. Noble, Associate Professor in the Departments of Information Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The SIGCIS Conference will take place *October 27th, 2019 in Milan, Italy, *on the Sunday of the SHOT conference. *Abstracts are due June 15.* Below you can find the full CFP for this year's conference. These details can also be found at our conference website: meetings.sigcis.org Please circulate widely, and we hope to see you in Milan! -Laine Nooney, Andrew Russell, Gerardo Con Diaz, Stephanie Dick, and Kera Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------ EXCEPTION ERROR: Fatal, Illegal, Unknown Milan, Italy | October 27, 2019 The Special Interest Group in Computing, Information, and Society [SIGCIS] welcomes submissions to their annual conference Proposal Due Date: June 15, 2019 KEYNOTE SPEAKER Safiya U. Noble Associate Professor, Departments of Information Studies and African American Studies University of California, Los Angeles THEME Our experience of contemporary computing systems can feel unobtrusive and seamless—until it’s not. In the simplest sense, an exception error occurs when a computational operation fails to resolve, revealing something that was not anticipated or cannot be computed, a breakdown in the norms of standardization that govern modern computing systems. These errors force us to recognize the profound frictions inherent in computing, frictions made legible in web page request denials, fatal system error dialogue boxes, unhappy Macs and blue screens, safe modes and red rings of death. Negotiating these errors is a material, programmatic, aesthetic, and above all, human activity. Beyond the technical, material, and social dimensions of the “exception error,” we might also see this concept as a provocation for history itself. Who and what are typically regarded as “exceptions" in the history of computing and information technologies? What uses and misuses have been anticipated? How can we productively make our conception of history slow down, jam, or stop working altogether? What are the limits of our historiographic situation? And as we investigate these questions, might we discover that the people, objects, knowledges, and disciplines so often treated as “exceptions” in the status quo of computing history are actually that history’s most revealing actors, its most central artifacts? The 2019 SIGCIS Conference invites scholars, museum and archive professionals, IT practitioners, artists, and independent researchers across the disciplinary spectrum to submit abstracts related to the historical conditions of computing. We are especially interested in (but not limited to) work that relates to the theme of exception and error, broadly and imaginatively construed. Areas of engagement may include: - errors, viruses, crashes, hacks, breakdowns, failures, risks - bodies, subjectivities, and personhoods unaccounted for in computing systems - theories of uncomputability - unanticipated uses and misuses - the creation of “users” - standards and workflows - breakdowns in policies, regulations, norms, expectations - decline, obsolescence, maintenance, repair, recycling, afterlives - the limits of historical representation - centering the peripheries of computing history - archival gaps and silences SIGCIS is especially welcoming of new directions in scholarship. We maintain an inclusive atmosphere for scholarly inquiry, supporting disciplinary interventions from beyond the traditional history of technology and promoting diversity in STEM. We welcome submissions from: the histories of technology, computing, information, and science; science and technology studies; oral history and archival studies; critical studies of big data and machine learning; studies of women, gender, and sexuality; studies of race, ethnicity, and postcoloniality; film, media, and game studies; software and code studies; network and internet histories; music, sound studies, and art history; and all other applicable domains. The annual SIGCIS Conference begins immediately after the regular annual meeting of our parent organization, the Society for the History of Technology [SHOT]. Information about the annual SHOT conference can be found at: https://bit.ly/2rG75Ks SUBMISSION FORMATS SIGCIS welcomes proposals for individual 15-20 minute papers, 3-4 paper panel proposals, works-in-progress (see below), and non-traditional proposals such as roundtables, software demonstrations, hands-on workshops, etc. WORKS-IN-PROGRESS The Works-in-Progress (WiP) session will be a workshop wherein participants will discuss their work in small group sessions. We invite works in progress—articles, chapters, dissertation prospectuses—of 10,000 words or less (longer works must be selectively edited to meet this length). We especially encourage submissions from graduate students, early career scholars, and scholars who are new to SIGCIS. Authors who submit a WiP will also commit to reading (in advance) two other WiPs, discussing them in a small group setting, and providing written feedback on one of those WiPs. Scholars who would like to participate in this session without submitting their own WiP may also apply; we ask that they commit to reading (in advance) at least two of the WiPs. Submissions for WiP only require a 350-400 word abstract, but applicants should plan to circulate their max-10,000-word WiPs no later than September 30, 2019. Scholars who would like to be a reader of WiPs, please email a brief bio or 1-page CV, along with your areas of interest and expertise, to Gerardo Con Diaz [condiaz(a)ucdavis.edu] SUBMISSION PROCEDURE Submissions are due June 15, 2019. Applicants should download, fill out and follow the instructions on the application cover sheet at http://meetings.sigcis.org/call-for-papers.html. All submissions will require: ● 350-400 word abstract (full panel proposals should additionally include a 200-250 word panel abstract in addition to 3-4 paper abstracts) ● 1-page CV or resume Please Note: Individuals already scheduled to participate on the main SHOT program are welcome to submit an additional proposal to our workshop, but should make sure that there is no overlap between the two presentations. However, SIGCIS may choose to give higher priority to submissions from those not already presenting at SHOT. Questions regarding submission procedure should be sent to Kera Allen [kera.jones(a)gmail.com] TRAVEL AWARD The top financial priority of SIGCIS is the support of travel expenses for graduate students, visiting faculty without institutional travel support, and others who would be unable to attend the meeting without travel assistance. The submission cover sheet includes a box to check if you fall into one of these categories and would like to be considered for an award. These is no separate application form, though depending on the volume of requests and available resources we may need to contact you for further information before making a decision. Any award offered is contingent on registering for and attending the SIGCIS Conference. Please note that SHOT does not classify the SIGCIS Conference as participation in the SHOT annual meeting, so acceptance by SIGCIS does not imply eligibility for the SHOT travel grant program. Details of available awards are at http://www.sigcis.org/travelaward. SIGCIS CONFERENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Laine Nooney <http://www.lainenooney.com/>, New York University (SIGCIS Vice-Chair of Meetings) Andrew Russell <http://www.arussell.org/>, SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SIGCIS Chair) Stephanie Dick <https://hss.sas.upenn.edu/people/stephanie-dick>, University of Pennsylvania Gerardo Con Diaz <https://www.condiaz.com/>, University of California, Davis (SIGCIS Treasurer) Kera Allen <https://hts.gatech.edu/people/person/e2f55e07-937a-571a-a4f8-c32c87fef19d>, Georgia Institute of Technology (Conference Assistant)

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Where is this ivory Roman hand abacus?
by herbert.bruderer＠bluewin.ch 10 Jun '19

10 Jun '19

Dear all Does anyone know where this very rare Roman hand abacus made of ivory is? https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/235956-in-search-of-a-rare-roman-pocke… Many thanks for your help. Best, Herbert -- Bruderer Informatik Seehaldenstraße 26 Postfach 47 CH-9401 Rorschach Switzerland Telefon +41 71 855 77 11 Amazon https://tinyurl.com/y9upwagp

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Software as Intellectual Property, June 12, at the Smithsonian’s NMAH
by Hintz, Eric 07 Jun '19

07 Jun '19

**Hi SIGCIS – On June 12, check out Gerardo Con Diaz discussing ideas from his new book on the history of software patents, at the museum in DC or via webcast!! Eric Hintz Software as Intellectual Property, June 12, at the Smithsonian’s NMAH Software is everywhere – in our desktop applications, mobile phones, coffee makers, automobiles, and pacemakers – yet how to categorize it and protect the work of its authors, inventors, and coders has long been controversial. Is software patentable, copyrightable, or should some other domain of rights and property apply? As language that controls machines, generates virtual worlds, and creates and solves equations, software crosses traditional boundaries. Since the emergence of computer software in the 1940s, inventors, legal scholars, attorneys, and jurists have wrangled with a number of issues. Should a coded set of instructions (by itself) be eligible for intellectual property protection, or must the software be embedded physically in some device? To protect software, should developers apply for a patent or a copyright? Who should be responsible for detecting software piracy and infringement, and at what scale? How do we prevent overlapping or competing claims from stifling further innovation in one of our most dynamic industries? Panelists will discuss the history and development of software IP protections while considering the concerns of inventors, corporations, and consumers. SPEAKERS: · Gerardo Con Diaz, Assistant Professor, Science and Technology Studies, University of California, Davis, and author of Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America<https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300228397/software-rights> (Yale University Press, 2019) · Susann Keohane, Master Inventor, Global Leader for Healthy Aging & Longevity, IBM · Robert W. Bahr, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, USPTO · Moderator: Arthur Daemmrich, Director, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History · Closing Remarks: Kevin Madigan, Deputy Director, Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University This event is free and open to the public! DETAILS: Wed June 12, 2019, 1:00-2:30pm EDT Wallace H. Coulter Performance Plaza, 1st Floor West Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Constitution Avenue at 13th Street NW Washington, DC USA Directions: http://americanhistory.si.edu/visit/getting-here LIVE WEBCAST: https://livestream.com/uspto/SoftwareIP-Lemelson<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flivestrea…> More Details: · https://invention.si.edu/about/events/software-intellectual-property · https://cpip.gmu.edu/software-as-intellectual-property/ This event is co-presented by The Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation<https://invention.si.edu/>, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)<https://www.uspto.gov/>, and the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP)<https://cpip.gmu.edu/> at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.

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FC: Oral history of USB
by Joly MacFie 03 Jun '19

03 Jun '19

Fast Company interview with Ajay Bhatt, Bala Cadambi and Jim Pappas of Intel https://www.fastcompany.com/3060705/an-oral-history-of-the-usb [excerpt] OKAY, BUT: WHY WASN’T THE PLUG REVERSIBLE? AB: Good question. We had looked at it, but the whole goal here was to make it very inexpensive, and at that point, we were trying to solve all the USB problems with two wires. At that point, if you added wires to make things flippable, you have to add wires, and you also have to add a lot of silicon. Wires and pins cost real money, so we decided to keep it as cheap as possible. With serial port and parallel port, there were versions that were 25 pins and 36 pins and so on and so forth. The cables were very thick and expensive. We were trying to solve all the problems. We went in favor of fewer wires. In hindsight, a flippable connector would have been better. AB: Our goal was to say that this interface should be such that it should work on a mouse and it should also work on a high-end printer or on digital cameras. That’s what we were looking at, the range of products. At one end, we wanted it simple enough, so there could be very low costs. At the other end, we wanted to make sure that it could be scaled and, just as we speak today, we’re running the USB at tens of gigs. The original one was running at 12 megs. We’ve come a long way in scaling. THE CALL FROM MICROSOFT’S BETSY TANNER THAT SAVED USB JP: One of the people we met at Microsoft was Betsy Tanner, and at the time, she was the engineering manager for the mouse. I talked to Betsy and said, “if there ever comes a day that you’re not going to use USB for your next Microsoft mouse, I need to know.” And she says, “okay, that’s a fair request.” We were designing USB—originally, it was supposed to be a five megabit-per-second bus, which at the time was faster than anything else that normally would come at the back of the PC. It’s not fast by today’s standards, but at the time, it seemed fast. And the reason we wanted high speed was so you could fan it out through hubs, and basically, however many devices would be attached to that single port would be sharing that bandwidth—not necessarily all being used simultaneously, but we wanted it to be fairly robust. Well, Betsy called me one day and said, “Jim, you asked me to call you if we’re not going to be using USB for the mouse. I’m calling you to tell you we’re not going to be able to do it because we have a problem.” And I said, “what’s the problem?” She says, “Well, 5 megabits is just too fast.” I said, “For a mouse, we don’t need that much bandwidth, and secondly, I’m really afraid of whether we can pass the electrical magnetic interference specifications. Signals going through a wire become an antennae. Am I going to have too much EMI radiation coming off creating digital noise?” She said, “we could solve it by putting a shield around it, but it adds 4 cents per foot to the cost of a cable. If I’ve got a six foot cable that adds 24 cents. So I can’t do that. Secondly, if I put a shield on it, a mouse needs to have a simple cable. The cable can’t affect the movement of the mouse, and I’m afraid that if I put a shield, it becomes too stiff.” So I said, “Betsy, what could you live with?” She said, “We’d be comfortable with two megabits per second.” And I said, “Damn, that’s just as slow. Give me a week, can you do that?” She said yes. I came back to the team, and we discussed Microsoft’s problem, and that’s where we actually split it, where we had a high speed and a low speed in the bus. At the high speeds, we brought it up to 12 megabits per second. And then we made the slow speed down to one and a half megabits per second, which was three quarters of the speed that was her maximum. We saved Microsoft, we saved the mouse. And I think that that call from Betsy saved the program. One of the reasons why USB was so successful is because it hit the cost point that was required. It didn’t add any significant cost to the PC. You can even make the argument that it reduced the cost, over time. [/exceprt] -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast -------------------------------------------------------------- -

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The Apollo Guidance Computer, NASA, and Silicon Valley
by Ceruzzi, Paul 01 Jun '19

01 Jun '19

Alex, et al: There has been so much written about the Apollo Guidance Computer that it is hard to step back and get some perspective. Maybe this older blog post will help. This is relevant to my earlier statement that NASA often was compelled to be behind the leading edge in computer development--which is not always a bad thing, Walter Isaacson notwithstanding. https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/apollo-guidance-computer-and-f… [https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/callout_tile/public/i…]<https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/apollo-guidance-computer-and-f…> Apollo Guidance Computer and the First Silicon Chips | National Air and Space Museum<https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/apollo-guidance-computer-and-f…> airandspace.si.edu As the Apollo program took form in the early 1960s, NASA engineers always kept the safety of their astronauts at the fore in light of the enormous risks they knew were inherent in the goal of landing on the Moon and returning safely. Wherever possible, they designed backup systems so that if a primary system failed the crew would still have the means to return home safely. Paul Ceruzzi (now also emeritus) "I love the smell of rosin-core solder in the morning." ________________________________

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Members Digest, Vol 51, Issue 13
by Ceruzzi, Paul 01 Jun '19

01 Jun '19

Alex: It depends on how fine-grained the Wall St. Journal wants to be. In 1954 the NACA acquired an ERA 1103 computer and modified its instructions to include an "interrupt" facility -- the first ever and a feature that is standard on all computers since (I'll let you decide whether NASA can take credit for an NACA innovation!) For project Mercury, NASA, as a customer, modified an IBM mainframe to operate in real-rime--another major innovation. That included the IBM 7090 featured in the movie "Hidden Figures." IBM's policy was to lease, not sell, its machines, and customers were not allowed to modify them in any way. But NASA had the clout, and real-time computer usage has since... well, you get the picture. Later on, at the MSFC in Houston, NASA created a program that allowed both real-time and batch processing to go on at the same time: "HASP" (I think it meant "Houston Automatic Spooling Priority" -- "SPOOL was another IBM acronym). This was a big deal in the mainframe era; not sure if it still is, however. I haven't checked, but I am sure that Wikipedia has a lengthy discussion of HASP & SPOOL. In general I would say that in many instances NASA has been behind the curve, but that is a topic for another day. So the bottom line is, yes, but the Wall St. Journal may not be all that interested in the finer details of computer architecture. Paul Ceruzzi By the Way, James Tomayko's book on NASA & Spaceflight computers is available in many libraries, including the Smithsonian's. If librarians have trouble finding it, tell them to look for the "Encyclopedia of Computer Science & Technology," volume 18, supplement 3 (Marcel Dekker, 1987). ________________________________ From: Members <members-bounces(a)lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of members-request(a)lists.sigcis.org <members-request(a)lists.sigcis.org> Sent: Friday, May 31, 2019 4:35:16 PM To: members(a)lists.sigcis.org Subject: Members Digest, Vol 51, Issue 13 Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)lists.sigcis.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.sigc… or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request(a)lists.sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner(a)lists.sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. NASA contributions to computer development (Alex Roland) 2. Re: NASA contributions to computer development (Armando Fox) 3. Re: NASA contributions to computer development (David C. Brock) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 17:48:12 +0000 From: Alex Roland <alex.roland(a)duke.edu> To: "members(a)SIGCIS.org" <members(a)SIGCIS.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] NASA contributions to computer development Message-ID: <AB00619D-B221-496A-B656-7EE90AB96AFA(a)duke.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Friends: I have been a passive member of SIGCIS for many years now, even though I am no longer an active researcher in the field. Still, I follow your correspondence with great interest. I am writing now because I have received an inquiry from a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who is interested in NASA?s historical contributions to computer development. I know from research on my book Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993 (2002) that NASA was involved in the Federal High Performance Computing Program in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I do not, however, know of other significant contributions by NASA to computer development. If anyone knows of such contributions, I would be happy to know about them. Thanks, Alex Roland

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