From: "Ceruzzi, Paul" <CeruzziP@si.edu> Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 8:55 AM To: "Evan Koblentz" <evan@snarc.net>, "members@sigcis.org" <members@sigcis.org> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen and the communities of IT History

Evan:

I support your suggestions. I remember attending the VCF in Santa Clara, CA in 1999 and it was one of the most memorable high points of my entire career. I gave an interview to an on-line-only journal (radical at that time--this was 1999) about the ASR-33; I saw someone building a replica of

Evan, I too support your suggestions. Academic professionals might consider the value of an "adopt a hobbyist" program. I find myself in the middle of both worlds. Although recently I taught a computer history class at the University of Delaware for three semesters, the bulk of my day-to-day research is hands-on restoration work. Bill Degnan vintagecomputer.net billdeg@udel.edu -------- Original Message -------- the Whirlwind using modern miniaturized vacuum tubes [!]( I think it was Whirlwind, could be wrong but it was definitely vacuum tubes); I got to hang out & shoot the breeze with Lee Felsenstein. The only downside, sort of, is that I got a t-shirt that is so cool that I only wear it once every five years, since I am afraid of wearing it out.

On the other hand, my general impression of Silicon Valley, from the

perspective of the East Coast, is that the people out there have no rear-view mirror or brake pedal. They just go forward as fast as possible. Some exceptions. Not good for historians, but that is who they are.

Paul E. Ceruzzi Chair, Division of Space History National Air & Space Museum MRC 311; PO Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-7012 202-633-2414 <http://www.nasm.si.edu/staffDetail.cfm?staffID=24>

-----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On

Behalf Of Evan Koblentz

Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 2:18 AM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen and the communities of IT History

Tom et al,

...

...

there's a broader question of how to bridge the interests of scholars, donors, and enthusiasts which is a challenge not just for SIGCIS but for the history of computing community as a whole. Any thoughts on contributions SIGCIS could make in this area are welcome.

I made an observation at the DC meeting: collectors / hobbyists in general are as far removed from UNIVAC and Burroughs as history professors are from Apple and Sinclair, however, as scholars of the histories of computing begin to cover the minicomputer / homebrew / microcomputer generations, that will naturally appeal more to hobbyists'

first-person experiences.

So I have three suggestions for SIGCIS members:

- Change gears! Rather than clawing for fresh angles about Babbage, mainframes, and business software, consider "the many histories" of the PDP-11, CP/M, the S-100 bus, single-board computing, small-scale storage

media, user groups beyond just SHARE, the BBS, x86 chips (and rivals), and the early days of graphical interfaces, to name a few.

- Embrace grassroots history. Make consumer end users a priority, not a curiosity. Learn about computer museums that aren't professional institutions. CHM isn't the only computer museum doing good work. Attend

the Vintage Computer Festival (as Peter Meyer said in a May 27 SIGCIS post, "The whole thing was quite electric, memorable, and worthwhile.") Unfortunately, for each of the past three Vintage Computer Festival East

shows, I posted on this list asking for guest lecturers to creatively show hobbyists a scholarly perspective -- and received no responses.

- Touch something! Obtain a piece of vintage computer gear and play with

it. Whether it's an ASR-33 teletype, IMSAI, an ordinary TRS-80, or a BASIC emulator for Windows 7 -- it doesn't matter what.

From the opposite perspective, several of us on the hobbyists side are ourselves easing into scholarly topics, and convincing others to do so. We've had VCF lectures about ENIAC, UNIVAC, RCA, Monrobot, and the ARPAnet -- all from people in the industry. My user group's mailing list

is how Ian King learned about the Allen job. CHM's Al Kossow is an esteemed member of the discussion list at classiccmp.org and also runs the precious hobby resource at Bitsavers.org. _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members