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Andy Clark: Lorenz, Colossus and the Dream of a Universal Machine for Cryptanalysis
by Brian Randell 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

Hi: Now on YouTube: Andy Clark: Lorenz, Colossus and the Dream of a Universal Machine for Cryptanalysis A talk by Andy Clark of TNMOC and Royal Holloway at the "ENIGMA – Precursor of the Digital Civilization" conference organized by the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation on 10 November 2015 in Warsaw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnzjPmNDom4 Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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Digital Technology - Past and Present
by Brian Randell 05 Feb '16

05 Feb '16

Hi: This 52 page booklet, from the Open University, produced in conjunction with the BBC (which I learned about from a documentary about Ada Lovelace on BBC2 last night, part of their Making it Digital season), can be downloaded from: https://css2.open.ac.uk/outis/docs/publications/OZRDIG.pdf Its Introduction: "Digital technologies have changed the way we work, shop, socialise, and are entertained. Behind them lie clever algorithms – step by step procedures that detect where we are and suggest a route, predict the weather, recognise our fingerprint, and do many other things. Algorithms pre-date computers by over 2000 years. For example, simple arithmetic procedures, like long division, are algorithms. In this pack you will see how computation changed over time, from early calculating devices to modern computers, who are some of the women and men behind major breakthroughs, what are the fundamental concepts and the limitations of algorithms. You will also see how to translate algorithms into code, so that computers can execute them much faster and more precisely than humans ever could. " Cheers Brian Randell PS The documentary about Ada Lovelace was much better than the brief account of her in this booklet. Hopefully this BBC series will show up on PBS soon. -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell

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E-book version of ENIAC book
by Thomas Haigh 04 Feb '16

04 Feb '16

Thanks to Evan for checking up on the status of the e-book. While MIT Press remains far and away the best place to publish a book of this kind, some recent personnel changes and resultant turmoil there came just at the wrong moment for our book. I think the e-book delay is probably tied to another problem, which is that the person the press hired to do the indexing (as per our contract) never produced an index. We were told that she had just stopped replying to emails. So back in September the press told us that to have books out by this month's anniversary we had to forgo a subject index in the print edition. As Penn was already planning to use the book as the centerpiece for its anniversary event that seemed like a better option than a further delay from the originally promised publication date of October 2015. We've been promised that an index will be ready this month, and made available online for download by purchasers of the print edition. A PDF index would be more useful than a print version anyway, as it's searchable. My understanding is that the index will be incorporated into the e-book edition, which is presumably why it's delayed as this complicates the usual production process. Hopefully there will be a Kindle version, which is a different thing from the MIT e-book, but that would be in the hands of Amazon and I don't think could happen until after MIT makes its own electronic version. Best wishes, Tom -----Original Message----- From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2016 10:27 AM To: thaigh(a)computer.org; members(a)sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] ENIAC in Action - book, website, and free poster > Looks like the e-book option is not yet available. Web site only shows > hardcover when you mouse over 'buying options'. I called MIT Press; > they said they'll check and reply soon. They called back and said the e-book option won't be available until early April. _______________________________________________ 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 http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

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ENIAC in Action - book, website, and free poster
by Thomas Haigh 04 Feb '16

04 Feb '16

Hello SIGCIS, I'm pleased to announce the publication by MIT Press of ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, which I wrote with Mark Priestley and Crispin Rope. Thanks to all those in the SIGCIS community who helped us at various points along the way. Copies are now shipping from the MIT Press warehouse, and Paul Ceruzzi tells me that his has already arrived. You can get 30% off this or any other MIT Press STS title by using the code M16STS30 at checkout from the MIT Press store. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/eniac-action The book is much less boring than you probably expect. Because the book focuses on a single artifact we could expand our breadth of coverage in time (from 1943 to the present day) and in the variety of historical approaches taken. Thanks to a series of major legal battles running from the 1950s to the 1970s we could draw on an exceptionally extensive archival collections. We used these to dig deep into the technical mysteries of ENIAC, reconstructing the programming techniques used, the physical spaces built to house it, and the evolution of its design. Yet we also explore ENIAC as a workplace (literally, as its operators stood inside it), as an object in historical memory, and as the product of a bureaucratic organization. This challenged us to integrate historical methods from fields as disparate as business history and the history of mathematics and to package the results in a form accessible to diverse audiences. It chimes with several recent topics of discussion on this list, from the importance of the "maintainers" (by broadening ENIAC from a dot on a timeline of innovation to a place for humdrum and diverse human toil) to the recent announcement of a summer school on the history of computer simulation. Any help that members of the SIGCIS community can give in drawing the book to the attention of other potential readers would be appreciated. I'm confident that it will be well received by people who already know that they would like to read an academic book about ENIAC, which is not all that many people. I have no idea whether it will be noticed in broader communities such as the history of physics, media studies, people interested in cold war technology, etc. Within the history of computing we've tended to view a disinclination to engage with technological detail as the hallmark of scholarly professionalism, but within the humanities more broadly there's a lot of enthusiasm for "the digital," non-human turns, thing theory, object oriented ontology, media archaeology, racism in Unix, etc. This relates very much the questions about the role of technical history I explored in the Communications of the ACM column "The Tears of Donald Knuth <http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom/Writing/CACMKnuthTears.pdf> " last year (which with more than 115,000 downloads seems to have been by some distance the most popular article published in Communications last year). There is a lot of material already on the book website at www.EniacInAction.com <http://www.EniacInAction.com> . This includes downloads of related articles, technical reports, and archival documents. These include the earliest known ENIAC set-up diagrams. There is also a poster http://eniacinaction.com/the-book/eniac-monte-carlo-poster/ of the astonishing December 1947 flow diagram for the Los Alamos Monte Carlo program run on ENIAC, which we view as the first modern computer code ever executed. Even if it wasn't a "first", it would still be of great interest as the best documented and most complex application program preserved from the 1940s. There's a PDF version online, but if you like it and want a free glossy poster (24x18 inches) then just email me your mailing address (offer limited to first 100 requests). We also have an extensive tabulation of ENIAC-related errors in Walter Isaacson's The Innovators. So if you ever feel tempted to believe a detail from that book, check it first at http://eniacinaction.com/the-articles/eniac-errors-in-isaacsons-the-innovato rs/. Best wishes, Tom www.tomandmaria.com/tom <http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom>

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Announcing the 2016-2017 Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship (Apps Due: 31 March 2016)
by Hintz, Eric 03 Feb '16

03 Feb '16

Dear SIGCIS- We are pleased to announce the Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship in honor of our friend, colleague, and long-time SHOT member, Art Molella. Details below - please consider applying or forwarding this announcement - many thanks! Best- Eric Hintz --- Announcing the 2016-2017 Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship Apps Due: 31 March 2016 The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation<http://invention.si.edu/> is pleased to announce the creation of the Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History (NMAH). We seek to appoint an experienced author or senior scholar from the history of technology, science and technology studies, business history, museum studies, STEAM education, or an allied field. The specific arrangement is flexible: the Molella Distinguished Fellow may use the funds as a sabbatical supplement; for several short-duration visits; for a single residency focused on research and writing; or for a series of lectures leading to a major publication. We invite the Molella Distinguished Fellow to participate in the intellectual life and programmatic activities of the museum; to take advantage of the expertise of the museum's research staff<http://americanhistory.si.edu/about/staff>; and to consult the Institution's vast invention and technology collections (see http:/collections.si.edu/<http://collections.si.edu/>). The Lemelson Center will assist in arranging a visa for non-US citizens, provide a workspace, and facilitate startup procedures at the Smithsonian. The Lemelson Center invites applications covering a broad spectrum of research topics in the history of technology, invention, and innovation. However, strong preference in the selection of the Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellow will be given to projects whose topics align with one (or more) of the Lemelson Center's strategic research and programmatic areas, including: (1) the role of place in invention and innovation; (2) the making and training of inventors and innovators; (3) innovation in sports; (4) the role of risk and failure in invention and innovation; or (5) projects that illuminate inventors from diverse backgrounds or any inventions and technologies associated with groups (e.g. women, minorities, disabled, LGBT, etc.) that are traditionally under-represented in the historical record. About Arthur P. Molella, PhD The Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship is endowed by The Lemelson Foundation<http://www.lemelson.org/> in recognition of Dr. Arthur P. Molella's<http://invention.si.edu/arthur-molella> scholarly contributions in recording and celebrating the history and importance of invention and innovation in American society. During his 40+ years at the Smithsonian, and as founding director (emeritus) of the Lemelson Center, Molella has been responsible for collecting initiatives, major exhibitions, and numerous publications that have explored Joseph Henry's scientific contributions; science in American life; Nobel laureates; foundational scholars (e.g. Mumford, Usher, Gideon) in the history of technology; eco-cities and connections between technology and the environment; museum strategies and best practices; the history of world's fairs and expos; and the influences of culture, play, and place in the inventive process. Stipend and Residency: $35,000 (US). Funds may be used flexibly to support travel for several short-term visits; living expenses for longer residences up to six months; and related research expenses. Dates are flexible. Fellows may begin their residencies on/after June 1, 2016 through May 31, 2017. To Apply: For application procedures, please visit http://invention.si.edu/arthur-molella-distinguished-fellowship. Applications are due 31 March 2016. For more information, please contact the fellowship coordinator, Eric S. Hintz, PhD, hintze(a)si.edu<mailto:hintze@si.edu>, +1 202-633-3734.

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Ida Rhodes Papers
by David C. Brock 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

Does anyone know if the personal papers and correspondence of Ida Rhodes survive? Best wishes, David C. Brock

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Fred Brooks Lecture
by John Impagliazzo 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

Hi All, Perhaps you may have missed this presentation. Below is a link to Fred Brooks' lecture from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in 2015 August. http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/lecture-tuesday-august-… His talk titled, "A Personal History of Computers" gives his perspective on computing history and evolution. This video could be fodder for a good discussion on the accuracy of his views. Enjoy! John John Impagliazzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University IEEE Life Fellow ACM Distinguished Educator

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"On Simulation in Science" - Call for Applications - Summer School2016
by david 02 Feb '16

02 Feb '16

Dear colleagues, I thought the following event might be of interest to members of this list. David Nofre -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [hct-l] "On Simulation in Science" - Call for Applications - Summer School2016 Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2016 17:17:40 +0100 From: Oliver Hochadel <oliver.hochadel(a)imf.csic.es> To: lista historia de la ciencia <hct-l(a)llistes.uab.cat> > Dear colleagues, > > We would like you to please circulate our call for applications to our > summer school"On Simulation in Science", to be held on September 26th to > 30th 2016, in Lueneburg (close to Hamburg, Germany). > > We would like to receive applications from doctoral students from the > fields of Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Science and > Technology Studies, as well as Software Studies, and of course the > Natural Sciences. Applicants' work could involve case-based studies on > scientific, economic and social simulations, and studies in the history > of computational methods in science. > Please submit your CV along with a 500-word abstract of your > dissertation, and a 500-word explanation as to why you would like to > attend the summer school. > > The deadline for applications is February 29th, 2016. Please email > applications to mecssummerschool(a)leuphana.de > <mailto:mecssummerschool@leuphana.de> > > Please find further information on our homepage > http://www.leuphana.de/en/research-centers/mecs/lecturesworkshops/summer-sc… > > Kind Regards, > Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation > (MECS) Leuphana University Lüneburg > > > > Institute for Advanced Study on > Media Cultures of Computer Simulation > Leuphana Universität Lüneburg > Scharnhorstr. 1 > D-21335 LÃ¼neburg, Germany > > Telephone: 0049 (0)4131 2197819 > mecs(a)leuphana.de > http://mecs.leuphana.de > >

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Question about system theory and engineering
by Julie Cohn 01 Feb '16

01 Feb '16

Is it safe to assume that there is a fairly good secondary literature on the influence of system theory on engineering advances in the last century? Would anyone be willing to point me to a good starting place? Thanks so much. -Julie Cohn ***************************** Julie Cohn, Ph.D. Research Historian Center for Public History University of Houston 315 McElhinney Hall Houston, TX 77204-3007 cohnconnor(a)comcast.net

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Wikipedia marks Elk Cloner Anniversary
by Joly MacFie 30 Jan '16

30 Jan '16

https://www.facebook.com/wikipedia/posts/10153801148348346 On this day in 1982: 15-year-old Richard Skrenta wrote the first PC virus code, 400 lines long and disguised as an Apple boot program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast -------------------------------------------------------------- -

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