See below ______________________ Marie Hicks, Ph.D. Asst. Professor, History of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, IL USA mariehicks.net | mhicks1@iit.edu | @histoftech Begin forwarded message:
From: Erik Rau <erau@Hagley.org> Date: June 25, 2013 15:42:57 CDT To: "admin@sigcis.org" <admin@sigcis.org> Subject: Announcement: New Collections at Hagley
An announcement for the list!
Thanks!
-- 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@hagley.org www.hagley.org/library
New Collections at Hagley Museum and Library
Hagley announces the addition of four new collections in the history of technology, covering computer developments at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and a landmark gender equality battle at AT&T.
Hagley Library has been providing access to portions of the David Sarnoff Collection as they are processed and become available. The papers of Joseph Weisbecker (1932-1990) cover his engineering career at the Radio Corporation of American (RCA), for more than thirty years. After graduating from Drexel, Weisbecker became staff engineer at RCA and worked on general computer development and design. In the early 1970s, Weisbecker developed a computer based on 8-bit architecture using the CMOS process released as COSMAC 1801R and 1801U, and integrated into the 1802 chip in 1976. Later, Weisbecker developed applications for the 1802, including light guns, card readers, and cassette interfaces. Weisbecker twice garnered the RCA Labs Outstanding Achievement Award, the Best Paper Award from the IEEE Computer Society, and the David Sarnoff Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement.
Hagley has also made available the papers of Lois Herr. Herr worked as a manager for Bell Telephone Laboratory and other units in the Bell System for 26 years. Aware that few women rose into high managerial positions at AT&T, she fought for gender equality. By 1970, her efforts gained the attention of lawyers at the recently formed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who opposed AT&T’s request to the Federal Communications Commission to increase its rates. The EEOC, the National Organization for Women, and other civil rights groups applied pressure from outside AT&T while Herr and others worked to change AT&T from within. The case was settled in 1973 and affected how the communications giant, AT&T, and other firms monitored and approached equal rights in the workplace.