Re: [SIGCIS-Members] history of history of computing courses
I can speak to the Rhodes College course since that one was mine. We only ran it once, but I thought it was a lot of fun. I can probably find my old syllabus if it would help, but there wasn't a huge amount of detail in it. Like the Purdue course I mentioned in another message, I used Williams book as my primary text. More recently, I've run a similar course here at Drexel University. I'm hoping to eventually make that one a regular offering. In both cases, the the primary focus was on the hardware, architecture, and similar technical factors. Software got about 10-20% of the time, and a similar amount of time was devoted to the development of theory. The cultural/ societal aspects only really appeared in the context of my lectures as background to the technical developments. For the more recent version, the assignments that I found the most fun to assign were writing a little bit of PDP-8 machine code (and I let them run it on an 8/M I've restored), "writing" a simple task on the ENIAC which they ran on my simulator, and writing a simulator for some early machine, with the Manchester Baby probably being the most popular choice. BLS -------------------------------------------- On Mon, 1/29/18, Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> wrote: Also, he has a website last updated in 1998 (http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/courses.html) that lists these courses at various universities: - University of Warwick CS330: History of Computing - University of Calgary, CPSC 509 - American University, CSIS 64.550 History of Computing - Stanford University STS 161 -- History of Computers. - Virginia Tech, CS 3604 Professionalism in Computing (contains a section on history). [J.A.N.’s own course] - Rhodes College, CS 465: Topics in Computer Science Computer History
I am not sure whether Brian Randell is on this listserv, but he has been involved with computing history since the early 1970s. See http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/History/ My guess is that Brian has likely taught a history course or history seminars at Newcastle back then. Perhaps someone would like to reach out to him. <brian.randell@ncl.ac.uk> John Impagliazzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University IEEE Fellow and Life Member ACM Distinguished Educator -----Original Message----- From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian L. Stuart Sent: Monday, 29 January, 2018 12:14 To: members@sigcis.org; Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] history of history of computing courses I can speak to the Rhodes College course since that one was mine. We only ran it once, but I thought it was a lot of fun. I can probably find my old syllabus if it would help, but there wasn't a huge amount of detail in it. Like the Purdue course I mentioned in another message, I used Williams book as my primary text. More recently, I've run a similar course here at Drexel University. I'm hoping to eventually make that one a regular offering. In both cases, the the primary focus was on the hardware, architecture, and similar technical factors. Software got about 10-20% of the time, and a similar amount of time was devoted to the development of theory. The cultural/ societal aspects only really appeared in the context of my lectures as background to the technical developments. For the more recent version, the assignments that I found the most fun to assign were writing a little bit of PDP-8 machine code (and I let them run it on an 8/M I've restored), "writing" a simple task on the ENIAC which they ran on my simulator, and writing a simulator for some early machine, with the Manchester Baby probably being the most popular choice. BLS -------------------------------------------- On Mon, 1/29/18, Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> wrote: Also, he has a website last updated in 1998 (https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fei.cs.vt.edu%2F~history%2Fcourses.html&data=02%7C01%7Cjohn.impagliazzo%40hofstra.edu%7C175d0175705849678c9008d5673bb65d%7Ce32fc43d7c6246d9b49fcd53ba8d9424%7C0%7C1%7C636528428515677129&sdata=ywE8IyxnqptwwlR6tAA5wNRkCzv2Mkdn8CKcOH8uuoE%3D&reserved=0) that lists these courses at various universities: - University of Warwick CS330: History of Computing - University of Calgary, CPSC 509 - American University, CSIS 64.550 History of Computing - Stanford University STS 161 -- History of Computers. - Virginia Tech, CS 3604 Professionalism in Computing (contains a section on history). [J.A.N.’s own course] - Rhodes College, CS 465: Topics in Computer Science Computer History _______________________________________________ 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 https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.sigcis.org%2Fpipermail%2Fmembers-sigcis.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cjohn.impagliazzo%40hofstra.edu%7C175d0175705849678c9008d5673bb65d%7Ce32fc43d7c6246d9b49fcd53ba8d9424%7C0%7C1%7C636528428515677129&sdata=OWVahOkuiQVOeRytjQU69%2BuQ%2Frk9Rg9YWhx%2BKkXvYyQ%3D&reserved=0 and you can change your subscription options at https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.sigcis.org%2Flistinfo.cgi%2Fmembers-sigcis.org&data=02%7C01%7Cjohn.impagliazzo%40hofstra.edu%7C175d0175705849678c9008d5673bb65d%7Ce32fc43d7c6246d9b49fcd53ba8d9424%7C0%7C1%7C636528428515677129&sdata=bAYjELTVDs%2FGHE634NnRR6HiEyfsuuGOAjQf7I9XcBQ%3D&reserved=0
About the mid-1990s, we put a course in the history of computing into the catalog at Eastern Michigan University. It was defined as a regular course, not special topics or the like (though it was deleted in later years). This might have been somewhat unusual since we were a computer science department, not history, STS, or similar. It was taught perhaps a couple times. The course was proposed and taught by our department head George Haynam (who as a grad student was asked to introduce a sharp young fellow named Don Knuth to the IBM 650 at Case Tech). I remember the course as innovator-centric rather than technology-centric. I'll see if I have any relevant files squirreled away on dusty disks. - Bill ________________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of John Impagliazzo [John.Impagliazzo@Hofstra.edu] Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 12:30 PM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] history of history of computing courses I am not sure whether Brian Randell is on this listserv, but he has been involved with computing history since the early 1970s. See http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/History/ My guess is that Brian has likely taught a history course or history seminars at Newcastle back then. Perhaps someone would like to reach out to him. <brian.randell@ncl.ac.uk> John Impagliazzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University IEEE Fellow and Life Member ACM Distinguished Educator -----Original Message----- From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian L. Stuart Sent: Monday, 29 January, 2018 12:14 To: members@sigcis.org; Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] history of history of computing courses I can speak to the Rhodes College course since that one was mine. We only ran it once, but I thought it was a lot of fun. I can probably find my old syllabus if it would help, but there wasn't a huge amount of detail in it. Like the Purdue course I mentioned in another message, I used Williams book as my primary text. More recently, I've run a similar course here at Drexel University. I'm hoping to eventually make that one a regular offering. In both cases, the the primary focus was on the hardware, architecture, and similar technical factors. Software got about 10-20% of the time, and a similar amount of time was devoted to the development of theory. The cultural/ societal aspects only really appeared in the context of my lectures as background to the technical developments. For the more recent version, the assignments that I found the most fun to assign were writing a little bit of PDP-8 machine code (and I let them run it on an 8/M I've restored), "writing" a simple task on the ENIAC which they ran on my simulator, and writing a simulator for some early machine, with the Manchester Baby probably being the most popular choice. BLS -------------------------------------------- On Mon, 1/29/18, Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu> wrote: Also, he has a website last updated in 1998 (https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fei.cs.vt.edu%2F~history%2Fcourses.html&data=02%7C01%7Cjohn.impagliazzo%40hofstra.edu%7C175d0175705849678c9008d5673bb65d%7Ce32fc43d7c6246d9b49fcd53ba8d9424%7C0%7C1%7C636528428515677129&sdata=ywE8IyxnqptwwlR6tAA5wNRkCzv2Mkdn8CKcOH8uuoE%3D&reserved=0) that lists these courses at various universities: - University of Warwick CS330: History of Computing - University of Calgary, CPSC 509 - American University, CSIS 64.550 History of Computing - Stanford University STS 161 -- History of Computers. - Virginia Tech, CS 3604 Professionalism in Computing (contains a section on history). [J.A.N.’s own course] - Rhodes College, CS 465: Topics in Computer Science Computer History _______________________________________________ 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 https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.sigcis.org%2Fpipermail%2Fmembers-sigcis.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cjohn.impagliazzo%40hofstra.edu%7C175d0175705849678c9008d5673bb65d%7Ce32fc43d7c6246d9b49fcd53ba8d9424%7C0%7C1%7C636528428515677129&sdata=OWVahOkuiQVOeRytjQU69%2BuQ%2Frk9Rg9YWhx%2BKkXvYyQ%3D&reserved=0 and you can change your subscription options at https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.sigcis.org%2Flistinfo.cgi%2Fmembers-sigcis.org&data=02%7C01%7Cjohn.impagliazzo%40hofstra.edu%7C175d0175705849678c9008d5673bb65d%7Ce32fc43d7c6246d9b49fcd53ba8d9424%7C0%7C1%7C636528428515677129&sdata=bAYjELTVDs%2FGHE634NnRR6HiEyfsuuGOAjQf7I9XcBQ%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ 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
My early course lectures also drew heavily on the Williams book, and on articles from the Annals of the History of Computing. In the first couple of years I used Stan Augarten’s nicely illustrated large-format book Bit by Bit as a textbook. It’s journalistic history, with flaws and misunderstandings, but accessible for undergrads. The Campbell-Kelly/Aspray/Yost/Ensmenger text has been immensely valuable. I’ve been using that as the main textbook for the last 15 years now. Best, Paul On Jan 29, 2018, at 09:13, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net<mailto:blstuart@bellsouth.net>> wrote: I can speak to the Rhodes College course since that one was mine. We only ran it once, but I thought it was a lot of fun. I can probably find my old syllabus if it would help, but there wasn't a huge amount of detail in it. Like the Purdue course I mentioned in another message, I used Williams book as my primary text. More recently, I've run a similar course here at Drexel University. I'm hoping to eventually make that one a regular offering. In both cases, the the primary focus was on the hardware, architecture, and similar technical factors. Software got about 10-20% of the time, and a similar amount of time was devoted to the development of theory. The cultural/ societal aspects only really appeared in the context of my lectures as background to the technical developments. For the more recent version, the assignments that I found the most fun to assign were writing a little bit of PDP-8 machine code (and I let them run it on an 8/M I've restored), "writing" a simple task on the ENIAC which they ran on my simulator, and writing a simulator for some early machine, with the Manchester Baby probably being the most popular choice. BLS -------------------------------------------- On Mon, 1/29/18, Janet Abbate <abbate@vt.edu<mailto:abbate@vt.edu>> wrote: Also, he has a website last updated in 1998 (http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/courses.html) that lists these courses at various universities: - University of Warwick CS330: History of Computing - University of Calgary, CPSC 509 - American University, CSIS 64.550 History of Computing - Stanford University STS 161 -- History of Computers. - Virginia Tech, CS 3604 Professionalism in Computing (contains a section on history). [J.A.N.’s own course] - Rhodes College, CS 465: Topics in Computer Science Computer History _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org<http://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 ___________________________ Paul N. Edwards William J. Perry Fellow in International Security Center for International Security and Cooperation<http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/> Stanford University Professor of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/> and History<http://www.lsa.umich.edu/history/> University of Michigan Contact: m: pedwards@stanford.edu<mailto:pedwards@stanford.edu> w: pne.people.si.umich.edu<http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/> t: @AVastMachine
Possibly one of the earliest courses on the history of computing was taught by Prof. Walter A. Sedelow, at the University of Kansas, ca. 1975-1976. http://www.kshs.org/archives/276982. I took the course, along with about five or six others, including Bernie Williams, whose article (co-authored with Bill Aspray) on “Arming American Scientists” is one of the most-cited of Annals papers. The course readings included Goldstine’s book (it had just appeared!), a collection of readings “Perspectives on the Computer Revolution” edited by Zenon W. Pylyshyn, and “Social Issues in Computing” by Kelly Gotlieb of the U. Toronto, whom some of you probably knew. I wish I had my course notes, but they disappeared years ago. I do recall Prof. Sedelow lecturing at length about J.C.R. Licklider, BBN, and SDC—topics which were hardly common in the mid-1970s. It may be possible to find a record of the course in the University of Kansas archives. BTW, Bernie wrote an excellent dissertation, “Computing with Electricity, 1935-1945,” which unfortunately was never published, but it is available through University Microfilms. Paul Ceruzzi ceruzzip@si.edu<mailto:ceruzzip@si.edu> 202-633-2414 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 ___________________________
participants (5)
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Brian L. Stuart -
Ceruzzi, Paul -
John Impagliazzo -
McMillan, William W -
Paul N. Edwards