Dear Colleagues,

Wanted to make people aware of a public history project/partnership to document and broadly disseminate the rich history of computing in the State of Minnesota (Engineering Research Associates, Remington Rand, Sperry-Univac, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, Cray Research, Lawson Software, IBM Rochester, etc.). Over the past year the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI), the UMN-HSTM Program, the Minnesota Historical Society (which provided funding through a competitive grant program for MN history), Twin Cities Pubic Television (TPT),  the Dakota County Historical Society and Lawshe Museum (DCHS/LM), the Minnesota High Tech Association, and industry volunteers (Univac's VIP Club of retirees) partnered to produce a Minnesota computing history website (and to lay the groundwork for an upcoming documentary).

The site has interactive time-lines, film/video footage, many photos, historical essays, etc.

The project's aim was two-fold from the start, to produce this website, and to launch the effort for a major public television documentary on the topic.  On the latter, many dozens of hours of video interviews with more than 30 pioneers (and historian Tom Misa, who authored Digital State: The Story of Minnesota's Computing Industry) were conducted. [Tom was an important early advisor and a major inspiration for this project.] The final stage of fundraising is happening now to create the television documentary. On this one-year (phase 1)  project, Univ. of Minnesota HSTM ABD student Elizabeth Semler was the chief researcher and project manager, HSTM Post-doc Jonathan Clemons a consulting advisor, and CBI Archivist Amanda Wick the primary archivist advisor.  I served as the primary historian advisor.

This project represents CBI's efforts to boost our already strong commitment to public history and outreach, a commitment extended by CBI's recent hire of longtime science museum curator Dr. Juliet Burba (most recently Director of Collections at the Bakken Museum) as our Outreach Historian and Administrator.

On a related note, we are grateful to the (Sperry-Univac) VIP Club's help, and to Lockheed for donating extensive Sperry-Univac archives to CBI (and important Sperry-Univac artifacts and photographs to the DCHS/Lawshe Museum).

Best, Jeff