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CBI's Tomash and Norberg fellowships ---> DEADLINE 15 January 2013
by Thomas J. Misa 12 Dec '12

12 Dec '12

Please circulate to potential applicants ! ---TJM Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellowship in the History of Information Technology The Charles Babbage Institute is accepting applications for the 2013-2014 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship will be awarded to a graduate student for doctoral dissertation research in the history of computing. The fellowship may be held at the recipient's home academic institution, the Charles Babbage Institute, or any other location with appropriate research facilities. The stipend is $14,000. It is intended for students who have completed all requirements for the doctoral degree except the research and writing of the dissertation. <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/tfellowship.html> ============================== Arthur L. Norberg Travel Fund The Arthur L. Norberg Travel Fund provides short-term grants-in-aid to help scholars with travel expenses to use archival collections at the Charles Babbage Institute. Each year we plan to award two or more $750 grants. <http://www.cbi.umn.edu/research/ntravelfund.html> ========================================= For each, please read the website materials -- including instructions about applications -- carefully.

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Wikipedia --> Computer: History of Information Machine
by Thomas J. Misa 06 Dec '12

06 Dec '12

Hi all, A student pointed out this interesting Wikipedia page (we're using Martin and Bill's splendid book this semester): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer:_A_History_of_the_Information_Machine> A section there lists some "corrections" on a future edition . . . which (I understand) our colleagues are busy working on. That will be great to see! ----TJM

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ACM History Committee ---> 2013 research support
by Thomas J. Misa 03 Dec '12

03 Dec '12

Hi all, This announcement will be posted soon at <http://history.acm.org/>. ACM's History Committee is planning a 2-day workshop for spring/summer of 2014, and directing its support of research in 2013 toward that end. ANY TOPIC in ACM history is perfectly fine to propose. Note also that there may be four awards, each up to $4,000. Normally, these should be for "research" projects. To get some forward thinking about ACM's history writ large, there may be support also for a wider "synthetic" project that examines the literature and suggests themes. Key point: the 2013 awards are coupled with the expectation that awardees also attend the ACM history workshop (in 2014). Please indicate your willingness to do so -- explicitly in your proposal. Expenses for the 2014 workshop will be paid by the ACM History Committee. ---TJM ================= ACM History Committee 2013 Program for Research in ACM History The Association for Computing Machinery, founded in 1947, is the oldest and largest educational and scientific society dedicated to the computing profession, and today has more than 100,000 members around the world. The ACM History Committee is preparing groundwork for a special history workshop in 2014. Aiming at the workshop, we will support research projects related to ACM’s professional and educational activities and/or to ACM’s rich institutional history including its organization, publications, SIG activities, and conferences. We may also consider support for wider synthetic projects, analyzing existing research on ACM and outlining themes to illuminate ACM’s nearly seven-decade history. We will support up to four projects with awards of up to $4,000 each. Successful candidates may be of any rank, from graduate students through senior researchers. All awardees must be willing to present their work to a two-day ACM History Committee-sponsored workshop, to be held during the spring or early summer of 2014. Workshop travel, lodging, and meals will be paid by ACM History Committee, in addition to this project award. To Apply: Applicants should send a 2-page CV as well as a 750-word project description that [a] describes the proposed research or synthetic project; [b] identifies the importance of specific ACM historical materials, whether traditional archival collections or online historical materials (oral histories, digitized conference papers, ACM organizational records, et al.); [c] discusses any additional project outcome besides the ACM history workshop (e.g. journal article, book or dissertation chapter, teaching resource, museum exhibit, website); and [d] outlines a timeline for completing the project—including, specifically, your willingness to contribute a 10-page (2500-word) paper to the 2014 ACM history workshop. Workshop papers will be pre-circulated to workshop attendees; revised versions may be published afterwards. In preparing a proposal, applicants should examine the document “ACM Research Materials” posted at <history.acm.org/content.php?do=links> as well as “Sources for ACM History,” CACM 50 #5 (May 2007): 36-41 <doi.acm.org/10.1145/1230819.1230836>. Other research materials relating to ACM history may also be used. Applicants should include a letter of endorsement from their home institution or an external scholarly reference. Proposals are due by 15 February 2013. Proposals should be submitted as a single pdf-format document to <history-webmaster(a)acm.org>. Notification of awards will be made within four weeks. ============================================================

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] real doctors, dirty pictures
by Nathan Ensmenger 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

My apologies if this comes through twice. I am having trouble posting directly to the list. On Nov 30, 2012, at 12:43 PM, "M. Hicks" <mhicks1(a)iit.edu> wrote: > One quibble: shouldn't they have referred to you as Dr. or Prof. Medina, rather than Ms.? Or is that how the NYT always does things? Tom has it correct about the NY Times style guides: according to them, PhDs aren't "real doctors" (this also happens to be my mother-in-law's policy, which she reminds me of not infrequently...) As for the inappropriate picture: While the inclusion in the promotional film may or may not be intentional, the pervasive presence of such images is, of course, not usual or coincidental. I have always wanted to do a little history of the pin-up photo in the computer industry, with its attendant implications for the gendering of the computing professions: One of my favorite images of the SAGE system is of a test program that technicians ran to test the CRT displays, which produced a crude outline of a pin-up girl. Here it is: [http://thecomputerboys.com/?attachment_id=482] And, of course, there is the infamous "Lena" image, which was a Playboy centerfold that became the reference image for academic computer scientists (and others) working on image processing technologies. It remains so to this day, and was just recently featured in an article in Nature Nanotechnology. There is a nice little piece in the IEEE Professional Communication Society newsletter that details the history of the Lena image, although it focuses on the copyright angle, rather the sexual harassment issue. [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf] Here also is a copy of the letter that the departing editor of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processsing sent out in 1996 in response to the controversy. He was not too concerned. He even quotes a feminist friend of his who was not at all offended! [http://ndevilla.free.fr/lena/] -Nathan -- Nathan Ensmenger Associate Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University, Bloomington homes.soic.indiana.edu/nensmeng/

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Eden Medina makes the New York Times - congratulations!
by Paul N. Edwards 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

SIGCISters - Eden Medina's great book, SIGCIS and SHOT prizewinner Cybernetic Revolutionaries, made the New York Times op-ed page yesterday! Will Wiles compared Cybersyn to British PM David Cameron's iPad app — the "No. 10 Dashboard," with which he apparently now runs the British government. Congratulations, Eden! - Paul ___________________________ Paul N. Edwards Professeur invité, Sciences Po, Paris, 2012-13) Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010) Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing) Mailing address (2012-13): 82 rue Mouffetard 75005 Paris, France (206) 337-1523 (fax) pne.people.si.umich.edu

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Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Members Digest, Vol 29, Issue 17
by Erik Rau 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

Thanks, Jim (and Tom)! I saw this on TV when it aired. It made me recall that in WWII, the US Army Signal Corps was responsible for nearly all of the Army’s information technology (ENIAC, famously, was supported the Army’s Ordnance Ballistic Proving Ground at Aberdeen, MD). This included everything from pigeons to typewriters to radar and cyrptography. -- Erik P. Rau, PhD Director, Library Services Hagley Museum and Library P.O. Box 3630, 298 Buck Road Wilmington, DE 19807 302.658.2400, ext. 344 erau(a)hagley.org<mailto:erau@hagley.org> www.hagley.org/library<http://www.hagley.org/library> On 2012.Nov.28, at 12:00 , <members-request(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members-request@sigcis.org>> <members-request(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members-request@sigcis.org>> wrote: Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request(a)sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner(a)sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. "WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders" (Thomas J. Misa) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:56:38 -0600 From: "Thomas J. Misa" <tmisa(a)umn.edu> To: sigcis <members(a)sigcis.org> Cc: Thomas Misa <tmisa(a)umn.edu> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] "WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders" Message-ID: <B149464D-DDCA-48CF-937B-B087B9DC2990(a)umn.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message to list from Jim Cortada -- see these BBC news items about long-dead pigeon code . . . . TJM <http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9772000/9772402.stm> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20456782> On Nov 28, 2012, at 8:54 AM, James Cortada wrote: This is way too much fun to ignore. Tom, for some reason, I can't send messages through the siglist, can you do that? Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada IBM Institute for Business Value 2917 Irvington Way Madison, WI 53713 USA jwcorta(a)us.ibm.com 608-270-4462

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Fwd: cfp: TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN RETAIL FINANCE OF SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

Colleagues Please circulate to anyone who might be able to make a contribution, and please have them contact J. Carles Maixe-Altes <maixe(a)udc.es> on a first instance. Kind regards Bernardo and Carles *Call for papers*** ** ** *TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION IN RETAIL FINANCE OF SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA ***** (Session proposal for the 11th International Congress of the Spanish Association of Economic History, [XI Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Española de Historia Económica, AEHE]. Madrid, September 2014)*** * ** ** *Organisers: *J. Carles Maixé-Altés (maixe(a)udc.es) and Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo ( b.batiz-lazo(a)bangor.ac.uk)**** ** ** Several authors have noted that the history of computing and information technology must be considered in a wide context, spanning countries, industries and societies. With this in mind whilist continuing with the effort by Bátiz-Lazo, Maixé-Altés and Thomes (Routledge, 2011), we aim to focus in greater depth on a region that seems to have received little attention. Spain and Latin America form a nucleus of exceptional importance. Most business organizations in these geographies are chiefly "late" adopters of adopters of computer technology, that is, they tend to embrace tried and tested applications and emphasise "tropicalization" and "domestication". This panel thus aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to better understand the historical transformations in which technological change has operated in retail finance within Spain and Latin America. In this framework, the following lines of work are proposed: ** ** - Technology within different financial institutions: banks, savings banks, mutual banks, central banks, cooperative banks and public banks -The world of insurance and its companies **** - Mechanisation and automation of stock markets and financial markets **** - Financial businesses and hardware manufacturers**** - The viewpoint of the history of applications and software in retail finance: systems of bank interconnection, new financial products and the scale and diversification of markets **** - “Plastic cards” and financial self servicing **** - The historical and sociological basis of a cashless society, financial digitalisation and customer relationship management**** - Comparisons between industries and countries **** - Digitalisation and financial globalisation **** ** ** *Agenda:* All parties interested in contributing to this session are invited to send a proposal of their paper via electronic post to any of the organisers (including a title, authors, relationship and a brief extract of the proposal). The deadline for receipt is 21 December 2012. In the spirit of the organisers, we plan to promote an edited book collecting the contributions to this session. **** -- ================== Twitter @BatizLazo Technological Innovation in Retail Finance: International Historical Perspectives Edited by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, J. Carles Maixé-Altés, Paul Thomes http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415880671 Home page: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/business/staff/bernardo_batiz-lazo.en.php Working papers: http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba14.html

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"WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders"
by Thomas J. Misa 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

Message to list from Jim Cortada -- see these BBC news items about long-dead pigeon code . . . . TJM <http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9772000/9772402.stm> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20456782> On Nov 28, 2012, at 8:54 AM, James Cortada wrote: > This is way too much fun to ignore. Tom, for some reason, I can't send messages through the siglist, can you do that? > > Dr. Jim (James) W. Cortada > IBM Institute for Business Value > 2917 Irvington Way > Madison, WI 53713 USA > jwcorta(a)us.ibm.com > 608-270-4462

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FYI: update of the IEEE Computer Society computing timeline
by Dave Walden 27 Nov '12

27 Nov '12

Hi, You may be interested that the Computer Society History Committee <http://www.computer.org/portal/web/volunteercenter/history>http://www.computer.org/portal/web/volunteercenter/history has updated the Society's computing history timeline <http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/Publications/timeline.pdf>http://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/Publications/timeline.pdf Please note that our committee does not claim that this is in any sense a list of "most important" events during any of the time intervals from 1997-2010 that the committee covered in its update. Rather, these are meant to be representative events including international and technology diversity. Best regards, Dave

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CHM event summary: 25th Anniversary of Sun's SPARC Microprocessor
by Alan J Weissberger 22 Nov '12

22 Nov '12

Please put the blog post on the front page of sigcis.org CHM Event Commemorating the 25th anniversary of Sun Micro’s SPARC Microprocessor http://www.sigcis.org/node/366 Happy Thanksgiving to all Alan J Weissberger Manager of IEEE ComSoc Community web site North American Correspondent IEEE GCN --- On Tue, 11/20/12, members-request(a)sigcis.org <members-request(a)sigcis.org> wrote: From: members-request(a)sigcis.org <members-request(a)sigcis.org> Subject: Members Digest, Vol 29, Issue 14 To: members(a)sigcis.org Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 9:00 AM Send Members mailing list submissions to members(a)sigcis.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request(a)sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner(a)sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Two-tonne Witch computer gets a reboot (Brian Randell) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:41:51 +0000 From: Brian Randell <brian.randell(a)newcastle.ac.uk> To: "members(a)sigcis.org" <members(a)sigcis.org>, Dag Spicer <spicer(a)computerhistory.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Two-tonne Witch computer gets a reboot Message-ID: <A417A863-1C7F-4B18-8FA6-201EFC7D79C4(a)ncl.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi: >From the BBC Two-tonne Witch computer gets a reboot The world's oldest original working digital computer is going on display at The National Museum of Computing in Buckinghamshire. <snip> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20395212 Cheers Brian Randell School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Members mailing list Members(a)sigcis.org http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members End of Members Digest, Vol 29, Issue 14 ***************************************

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