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CHM Archives Update: James Porter Hard Disk Industry Collection Now Available
by Dag Spicer 31 Mar '16

31 Mar '16

Dear Members, The Jim Porter papers are now open for research. Porter was the founder and publisher of Disk/Trend Report and is considered by many to have been the most influential person in the worldwide disk drive industry. Porter's unique relationship with nearly everyone of significance in the hard drive industry, as well as his agreement to anonymize all data, led hard drive companies to share their internal information, which Porter compiled into monthly snapshots of a massive industry in transition over decades. Porter’s collection is the most complete record of the computer storage industry available anywhere. View the collection guide at http://tinyurl.com/hopqz96. Thank you to the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant for providing the funds that made processing this collection possible! Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055

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April 15 | Mistakes Were Made 2.0 | Computer History, Decompiled
by Laine Nooney 29 Mar '16

29 Mar '16

Hi all, Forwarding the email blast for the event I've been organizing, Mistakes Were Made 2.0 @ NYU April 15. Eden Medina is keynote! Hope to see you there... -L *Friday, April 15, 2016 | 1:30-6:00 PM * *NYU Department of Media, Culture, and Communication239 Greene Street, Floor 8* It’s an old adage that journalists write the first draft of history, and historians compose the second. But what happens after that? Now in its second year, “Mistakes Were Made” proposes that getting history wrong is the inevitable precondition of historical research, as each generation of writers explores that gaps and ghosts left by the previous. Turning these insights on the swiftly obsolescing world of computer history, this event gathers emerging scholars challenging traditional technology narratives, and pairs them with creative coders, new media artists, tech innovators, and other members of computer culture’s past and present “fringe.” *SPEAKERS* Eden Medina <http://nyu.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=3…> (keynote) Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing, Director of the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University Marisa Bowe <http://nyu.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=a…> Editor-in-Chief of WORD, Executive Producer of Sissyfight <http://nyu.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=…> Tega Brain <http://nyu.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=…> Artist and environmental engineer, SUNY-Purchase Peter Sachs Collopy <http://nyu.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=…> Media historian and postdoctoral researcher, University of Southern California Martha Poon <http://nyu.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=…> Research Fellow, Data & Society *SCHEDULE* *1:30-3:00 pm* Marisa Bowe + Peter Sachs Collopy *3:00-4:30 pm* Tega Brain + Martha Poon *4:30-5:30 pm* Eden Medina, Keynote “The Promise and Peril of Computer Technology in the Area of Human Rights” *5:30-6:00 pm* Reception *Hosted by the NYU Department of Media, Culture, and Communication <http://nyu.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=…>, with generous support from the NYU Center for the Humanities <http://nyu.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=0ac8c97417eade73a7595c79a&id=…> and the NYU Libraries. Designed and produced by Laine Nooney, Erica Robles-Anderson and Shari Wolk. * -- Laine Nooney www.lainenooney.com DM <http://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/> @ LMC <http://lmc.gatech.edu/> @ GT <http://www.gatech.edu/> Assistant Professor

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HSS panel proposals?
by Marie Hicks 28 Mar '16

28 Mar '16

Hi All, Is anyone here thinking of putting together a panel for the next HSS meeting? (Nov 3-6, 2016, Atlanta: http://hssonline.org/meetings/2016-hss-annual-meeting/2016-hss-call-for-pap… ) I plan to submit a paper proposal but am looking to join a session if there's one in the making where I would fit. Please let me know if you have one (and its topic) or if you might be interested in forming one. Proposals are due April 8th. Also, this will be my first time submitting a paper to HSS. What is the position of HSS when it comes to history of technology papers? Does anyone have advice on how to pitch a more history-of-technology-leaning paper to HSS? Best, Marie ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mhicks1(a)iit.edu | mariehicks.net <http://www.mariehicks.net> | @histoftech <http://twitter.com/histoftech>

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Continuing research on H. Philip Peterson and the Digital Mona Lisa
by andy patros 27 Mar '16

27 Mar '16

As I continue my research on H. Phillip Peterson and the Digital Mona Lisa/Mona By the Numbers that he created in 1965, I found a document from a session in 1966 at Boston, Mass. titled “The Present and Future of Film Reading”. I’ve attached the document here and wondered if anyone in this group might be able to provide me with any additional information regarding Mr. Peterson, both before and after this period of time, June 1966. As always, thank you for your assistance and consideration. Regards, Andy Patros www.digitalmonalisa.com <http://www.digitalmonalisa.com/>

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A fresh tissue of lies...
by Dag Spicer 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

Now available from S.A.’s dupes… … and a special thanks to all of us at SIGCIS … What also needs to be investigated, by likely an independent professional ethics body, is the biased, unscholarly, and defamatory attacks on Ayyadurai(‘SIGCIS Blog’, 2012),and the clear conflict of interest, as exemplified in the list of individuals in Mr. Haigh’s “Acknowledgements” section thanking those who helped him in denigrating Ayyadurai: “Acknowledgements: Thanks to the dozens of people who sent me hundreds of messages after learning that I was working on a response for the Post. Many helped to read and shape earlier drafts. In no particular order: Evan Koblentz, Catherine Lathwell, Peter Meyer, Dave Walden, Debbie Deutsch, Marie Hicks, James Sumner, Ken Pogran, Tom Van Vleck, Dag Spicer, Mark Weber, JoAnne Yates, Murray Turoff, Al Kossow, Ramesh Subramanian, David Alan Grier, Paul McJones, Nathan Ensmenger, David Hemmendinger, Jeffrey Yost, David Moran, Peggy Kidwell, Debbie Douglas, Alex Bochannek, Bill McMillan, Len Shustek, Petri Paju, Elizabeth Finler, Dave Crocker, Ray Tomlinson, Pierre Mounier Kuhn, James P.G. Sterbenz, Ben Barker, Jim Cortada, and Craig Partridge.” (‘SIGCIS Blog’, 2012) A significant cluster or coalition of the individuals listed in the Acknowledge- ments have a direct and indirect, and/or close affiliation to Raytheon/BBN, who claims they “invented email,” as evident on their website (Raytheon/BBN, n.d.), which brandishes the ‘@’ logo with its numerous press and marketing releases claiming that it is the home of the “inventor of email,” Mr. Ray Tomlinson.

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CHM Archives Update: Hewitt Crane papers now available
by Dag Spicer 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

The Hewitt D. Crane papers are open for research. Crane was an engineer and inventor at Stanford Research Institute from 1956 to 2005. He worked on many projects including all-magnetic computing and logic systems, presenting the idea of an all-magnetic computer at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in 1959. A prototype of a very early all-magnetic computer from SRI is in CHM’s collectionhttp://tinyurl.com/jtmy9o5. View the collection guide at http://tinyurl.com/zxtwkxa. Thank you to the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant for providing the funds that made processing this collection possible! Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055

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Vintage Computer Festival East (and West)
by Evan Koblentz 23 Mar '16

23 Mar '16

VCF East XI is April 15-17 this year, at our usual haunt -- the InfoAge Science Center, in Wall, New Jersey. The agenda.... - Friday: Fifteen tech classes/lectures, an eight-bit game programming hackathon, after-lunch keynote by John Blankenbaker who invented the Kenbak personal computer in 1971, long before Altair, Apple, etc. - Saturday morning: Keynote by Stewart Cheifet, who hosted "The Computer Chronicles" PBS television show in the 1980s - Sunday morning: Keynote by the legendary Ted Nelson. We've been trying to get him for many years.... - Saturday/Sunday, rest of the day: several dozen hands-on exhibits of 1960s-1980s computers, all up and running for visitors to enjoy. Also: learn-to-solder classes and tours of the various wings at the InfoAge center, including the newly doubled-in-size computer museum. (We were operating a "living" exhibition long before Paul Allen came up with that name...) This will be the first Vintage Computer Festival under its new ownership, the Vintage Computer Federation, which is a 501c3 non-profit. The web site is www.vcfed.org and the geek-in-charge is me. :) thanks, - Evan PS. - the new Federation also owns VCF West, which will be Aug. 6-7 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. (VCF Southeast, VCF Midwest, and the European editions are independent.)

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Andy Grove passed away today
by Dag Spicer 22 Mar '16

22 Mar '16

Read about Grove and his contributions in this new blog post by David Brock of CHM’s Center for Software History. http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/remembering-andy-s-grove/ Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055

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Marvin Minsky quotation
by Mary Murrell 21 Mar '16

21 Mar '16

I was hoping that the list might help me with the source of a quotation. Marvin Minsky is often quoted as having said the following: "Can you imagine that they used to have libraries where the books didn't talk to each other?" I have not been able to find any actual source for this. Citations, if they exist, are circular, citing back to a source that itself provides not citation. Does anybody know of a published source for this quotation? Thanks, Mary -- Mary Murrell marymurrell(a)fastmail.fm

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Spring/summer of vintage computing
by Evan Koblentz 18 Mar '16

18 Mar '16

SIGCIS'ers, There are four editions of the Vintage Computer Festival series in the U.S. this spring/summer. 1. April 2-3: Vintage Computer Festival Southeast (Atlanta) 2. April 15-17: Vintage Computer Festival East (central NJ) 3. August 6-7: Vintage Computer Festival West (Silicon Valley) 4. September 10-11: Vintage Computer Festival Midwest (Chicago) As always, each VCF event has a hands-on exhibit hall of 1960s-1980s systems and VIP keynotes. Other attractions you might find at a VCF include technical classes, consignment sales, vendors, and museum tours. A non-profit called the Vintage Computer Federation has been formed to organize such events. It also operates the largest discussion forum for vintage computer collectors/hobbyists, incubates local chapters, and owns the computer museum in New Jersey. Full details are at www.vcfed.org. - Evan

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