Paul Allen's Personal Museum
An interesting story at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516552161014410.ht ml It states that Paul Allen has commissioned a kilt-wearing grizzly graduate student to roam the globe tracking down rare machines of a physical size impractical for lesser collectors, such as a PDP-7 and IBM 70XX series machines. They're being restored for a personal museum. I hadn't heard of Ian King, but apparently he's a computing veteran working on an historical Ph.D. in the University of Washington Information School. The museum is online at http://www.pdpplanet.com/. The more machines that get preserved the better, and it certainly does more good for history than most billionaire hobbies. Perhaps this will evolve into a sustainably endowed public museum, or the machines will eventually be donated elsewhere. Yet when I see something like this is does make me ponder the widening disconnect between the growing community of scholars working on many aspects of the history of computing with minimal financial support and the comparatively huge amounts of money being spent/given by billionaires to support preservation with no involvement from Ph.D. historians. Maybe it's inevitable that the interests of the two groups would evolve in different directions. It's also true that academic priorities may have moved further than necessary from micro-level practice and materiality over the past few decades. This might be one of the topics for discussion at the forthcoming SIGCIS workshop, where I'm pleased to say that the panelists include people from the Smithsonian, Henry Ford Museum, Charles Babbage Institute, and Computer History Museum as well as academics from a variety of disciplines. http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11 Tom
I know Ian from the collectors' list based at www.classiccmp.org. A couple of years ago someone saw Allen's job ad, posted it, Ian applied, and landed it -- a dream job for a DEC enthusiast. I can introduce you to him if you want. However, I was slightly miffed that the Journal ignored the public computer museum here in their backyard, and instead wrote about a private one in Seattle. Despite what Allen calls it, this isn't a "museum," this is one man's private collection.
An interesting story at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516552161014410.ht ml
It states that Paul Allen has commissioned a kilt-wearing grizzly graduate student to roam the globe tracking down rare machines of a physical size impractical for lesser collectors, such as a PDP-7 and IBM 70XX series machines. They're being restored for a personal museum. I hadn't heard of Ian King, but apparently he's a computing veteran working on an historical Ph.D. in the University of Washington Information School. The museum is online at http://www.pdpplanet.com/.
The more machines that get preserved the better, and it certainly does more good for history than most billionaire hobbies. Perhaps this will evolve into a sustainably endowed public museum, or the machines will eventually be donated elsewhere.
Yet when I see something like this is does make me ponder the widening disconnect between the growing community of scholars working on many aspects of the history of computing with minimal financial support and the comparatively huge amounts of money being spent/given by billionaires to support preservation with no involvement from Ph.D. historians. Maybe it's inevitable that the interests of the two groups would evolve in different directions. It's also true that academic priorities may have moved further than necessary from micro-level practice and materiality over the past few decades.
This might be one of the topics for discussion at the forthcoming SIGCIS workshop, where I'm pleased to say that the panelists include people from the Smithsonian, Henry Ford Museum, Charles Babbage Institute, and Computer History Museum as well as academics from a variety of disciplines. http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11
Tom
_______________________________________________ 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
Maybe we should invite Mr. Allen to attend or send one of his people. Or even sponsor a session? Jonathan ----- Original Message ----- From: Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> To: members@sigcis.org Sent: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:25:03 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen's Personal Museum An interesting story at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516552161014410.ht ml It states that Paul Allen has commissioned a kilt-wearing grizzly graduate student to roam the globe tracking down rare machines of a physical size impractical for lesser collectors, such as a PDP-7 and IBM 70XX series machines. They're being restored for a personal museum. I hadn't heard of Ian King, but apparently he's a computing veteran working on an historical Ph.D. in the University of Washington Information School. The museum is online at http://www.pdpplanet.com/. The more machines that get preserved the better, and it certainly does more good for history than most billionaire hobbies. Perhaps this will evolve into a sustainably endowed public museum, or the machines will eventually be donated elsewhere. Yet when I see something like this is does make me ponder the widening disconnect between the growing community of scholars working on many aspects of the history of computing with minimal financial support and the comparatively huge amounts of money being spent/given by billionaires to support preservation with no involvement from Ph.D. historians. Maybe it's inevitable that the interests of the two groups would evolve in different directions. It's also true that academic priorities may have moved further than necessary from micro-level practice and materiality over the past few decades. This might be one of the topics for discussion at the forthcoming SIGCIS workshop, where I'm pleased to say that the panelists include people from the Smithsonian, Henry Ford Museum, Charles Babbage Institute, and Computer History Museum as well as academics from a variety of disciplines. http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11 Tom _______________________________________________ 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 -- Jonathan CoopersmithAssociate Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4326 979.845.7151 979.862.4314 fax http://aggiegaijin.blogspot.com/ ; Secretary Section L, History & Philosophy of ScienceAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)www.aaas.org
It would be fun if he did! SHOT as a whole used to have more attendance at its meetings from enthusiast historians (I remember a group of radar historians, for example) and museum people. In fact SHOT was centered on museums and material culture in its early days. As SHOT has matured and the history of technology had professionalized (to use the term loosely) as a scholarly field there's been much more of a standardization on the techniques and world view associated with Ph.D. historians working in universities. On balance that's a good thing for the field, but it does come at a cost. So that's why I'm pleased that the SIGCIS workshops are providing a welcoming venue for people from museums, institutes, schools of information and communication, etc. who are interested in engaging in a scholarly way with IT history. On the other hand there's a whole world of collectors, enthusiasts, restorers, retrogamers, old timers and the like out there who love old computers but are not necessarily interested in scholarly history. Some of them have the resources to pursue their passion on a larger scale than others. Evan Koblentz has been our informal liaison in this area. Clearly we would like to expose this broad audience to scholarly work on the history of computing. Many of those active in computing societies have probably come across Annals, which could maybe be a "gateway drug" for those so inclined. The SIGCIS online resources may also help. On the other hand the retrocomputing community will always have its own distinctive interests, centered more on machines and technical documentation than historical research papers. On an institutional level, SIGCIS has benefited enormously from the support of Len Shustek of the Computer History Museum in finding donors willing to support the CHM book prize and CHM travel awards. I'm hopeful that this points to the potential for more collaboration in the future. We don't realistically aspire to do independent fundraising outside the scholarly community as there are already at least three groups working to target such donors (CHM, the Charles Babbage Institute, and the IT History Society). SIGCIS works with all three. Of these the IT History Society is intended to serve in large part as a means of bring together historical projects in need of support with donors interested in supporting them. I'm pleased to say that we have received $200 from ITHS toward travel support for this year's meeting. ITHS did establish a list of "projects seeking funding" some years ago (see http://ithistory.org/projects/overview.php) though it's not clear that any funding has happened as a result. There were also plans for a regular meeting series to bring the communities together. http://ithistory.org/events/events-past.php. It's clear that the scholarly history of computing community and the professional societies of computing have drifted further apart in recent decades. Back in the 1970s AFIPS spent a great deal of money to sponsor the first history of computing activities, there were "pioneer days" at the Joint Computer Conferences, and Annals was organized by eminent computer people. The Charles Babbage Foundation raised a lot of money on behalf of what became CBI from the computer industry. These connections are not dead -- the ACM History Committee has been doing good work since 2004, including support for its archive, and of course IEEE Computer Society took over the publication of Annals and has proved a great home for it. But as I've looked recently at materials from 30 years ago it's striking how much deeper the connections used to be. So to get back to your suggestion: we'd love to welcome Paul Allen or anyone else interested in the history of computing to our workshop. We've particularly love to welcome people with the resources to sponsor our activities -- though Paul Allen probably gets asked for money a thousand times a day. But 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. Tom -----Original Message----- From: Coopersmith, Jonathan [mailto:j-coopersmith@neo.tamu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 11:23 PM To: Thomas Haigh Cc: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen's Personal Museum Maybe we should invite Mr. Allen to attend or send one of his people. Or even sponsor a session? Jonathan ----- Original Message ----- From: Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> To: members@sigcis.org Sent: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:25:03 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen's Personal Museum An interesting story at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516552161014410.ht ml It states that Paul Allen has commissioned a kilt-wearing grizzly graduate student to roam the globe tracking down rare machines of a physical size impractical for lesser collectors, such as a PDP-7 and IBM 70XX series machines. They're being restored for a personal museum. I hadn't heard of Ian King, but apparently he's a computing veteran working on an historical Ph.D. in the University of Washington Information School. The museum is online at http://www.pdpplanet.com/. The more machines that get preserved the better, and it certainly does more good for history than most billionaire hobbies. Perhaps this will evolve into a sustainably endowed public museum, or the machines will eventually be donated elsewhere. Yet when I see something like this is does make me ponder the widening disconnect between the growing community of scholars working on many aspects of the history of computing with minimal financial support and the comparatively huge amounts of money being spent/given by billionaires to support preservation with no involvement from Ph.D. historians. Maybe it's inevitable that the interests of the two groups would evolve in different directions. It's also true that academic priorities may have moved further than necessary from micro-level practice and materiality over the past few decades. This might be one of the topics for discussion at the forthcoming SIGCIS workshop, where I'm pleased to say that the panelists include people from the Smithsonian, Henry Ford Museum, Charles Babbage Institute, and Computer History Museum as well as academics from a variety of disciplines. http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11 Tom _______________________________________________ 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 -- Jonathan CoopersmithAssociate Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4326 979.845.7151 979.862.4314 fax http://aggiegaijin.blogspot.com/ ; Secretary Section L, History & Philosophy of ScienceAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)www.aaas.org
Tom, We at the IT History Society are pleased to offer our support to SIGCIS. You are doing a great job and we wish we could do more. Also, our best wishes to everyone for upcoming SHOT meeting. Thank you for the mention of some of the various activities that the IT History Society is involved in. We do appreciate it. As to your our projects database, that section is in sort of limbo until our membership grows and the archival community knows more about ITHS. We started the projects looking for funding too early for we ended up with too many projects looking for support and not enough grantors of funds. Yes, our master calendar of archival events is growing, but in addition to the databases mentioned, there are two other significant ones that need mentioning. First is our fully indexed IT searchable archival database of 750 IT sites archival sites. This indexed IT database is the only one of its kind where one can search ONLY IT archives and get only archived IT information. See - http://ithistory.org/resource_sites/resource-sites.php We expect the site to grow way past 1,000 sites by the second quarter of 2012. Second is our database of information technology individuals that have made an out of the ordinary contribution but not necessarily an extraordinary one. That site is located at http://ithistory.org/honor_roll/honor-roll-random.php. Currently there are around 750 honorees and expect the honoree entries to grow past 1,000 by mid 2012. Thank you. IT History Society One Blackfield Drive Suite 331 Tiburon, CA 94920 (415) 435-2263 info@ITHistory.org www.ITHistory.org Ensuring the Future by Preserving the Past -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Haigh Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 12:14 PM To: 'Coopersmith, Jonathan' Cc: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen and the communities of IT History It would be fun if he did! SHOT as a whole used to have more attendance at its meetings from enthusiast historians (I remember a group of radar historians, for example) and museum people. In fact SHOT was centered on museums and material culture in its early days. As SHOT has matured and the history of technology had professionalized (to use the term loosely) as a scholarly field there's been much more of a standardization on the techniques and world view associated with Ph.D. historians working in universities. On balance that's a good thing for the field, but it does come at a cost. So that's why I'm pleased that the SIGCIS workshops are providing a welcoming venue for people from museums, institutes, schools of information and communication, etc. who are interested in engaging in a scholarly way with IT history. On the other hand there's a whole world of collectors, enthusiasts, restorers, retrogamers, old timers and the like out there who love old computers but are not necessarily interested in scholarly history. Some of them have the resources to pursue their passion on a larger scale than others. Evan Koblentz has been our informal liaison in this area. Clearly we would like to expose this broad audience to scholarly work on the history of computing. Many of those active in computing societies have probably come across Annals, which could maybe be a "gateway drug" for those so inclined. The SIGCIS online resources may also help. On the other hand the retrocomputing community will always have its own distinctive interests, centered more on machines and technical documentation than historical research papers. On an institutional level, SIGCIS has benefited enormously from the support of Len Shustek of the Computer History Museum in finding donors willing to support the CHM book prize and CHM travel awards. I'm hopeful that this points to the potential for more collaboration in the future. We don't realistically aspire to do independent fundraising outside the scholarly community as there are already at least three groups working to target such donors (CHM, the Charles Babbage Institute, and the IT History Society). SIGCIS works with all three. Of these the IT History Society is intended to serve in large part as a means of bring together historical projects in need of support with donors interested in supporting them. I'm pleased to say that we have received $200 from ITHS toward travel support for this year's meeting. ITHS did establish a list of "projects seeking funding" some years ago (see http://ithistory.org/projects/overview.php) though it's not clear that any funding has happened as a result. There were also plans for a regular meeting series to bring the communities together. http://ithistory.org/events/events-past.php. It's clear that the scholarly history of computing community and the professional societies of computing have drifted further apart in recent decades. Back in the 1970s AFIPS spent a great deal of money to sponsor the first history of computing activities, there were "pioneer days" at the Joint Computer Conferences, and Annals was organized by eminent computer people. The Charles Babbage Foundation raised a lot of money on behalf of what became CBI from the computer industry. These connections are not dead -- the ACM History Committee has been doing good work since 2004, including support for its archive, and of course IEEE Computer Society took over the publication of Annals and has proved a great home for it. But as I've looked recently at materials from 30 years ago it's striking how much deeper the connections used to be. So to get back to your suggestion: we'd love to welcome Paul Allen or anyone else interested in the history of computing to our workshop. We've particularly love to welcome people with the resources to sponsor our activities -- though Paul Allen probably gets asked for money a thousand times a day. But 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. Tom -----Original Message----- From: Coopersmith, Jonathan [mailto:j-coopersmith@neo.tamu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 11:23 PM To: Thomas Haigh Cc: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen's Personal Museum Maybe we should invite Mr. Allen to attend or send one of his people. Or even sponsor a session? Jonathan ----- Original Message ----- From: Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> To: members@sigcis.org Sent: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:25:03 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Paul Allen's Personal Museum An interesting story at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516552161014410.ht ml It states that Paul Allen has commissioned a kilt-wearing grizzly graduate student to roam the globe tracking down rare machines of a physical size impractical for lesser collectors, such as a PDP-7 and IBM 70XX series machines. They're being restored for a personal museum. I hadn't heard of Ian King, but apparently he's a computing veteran working on an historical Ph.D. in the University of Washington Information School. The museum is online at http://www.pdpplanet.com/. The more machines that get preserved the better, and it certainly does more good for history than most billionaire hobbies. Perhaps this will evolve into a sustainably endowed public museum, or the machines will eventually be donated elsewhere. Yet when I see something like this is does make me ponder the widening disconnect between the growing community of scholars working on many aspects of the history of computing with minimal financial support and the comparatively huge amounts of money being spent/given by billionaires to support preservation with no involvement from Ph.D. historians. Maybe it's inevitable that the interests of the two groups would evolve in different directions. It's also true that academic priorities may have moved further than necessary from micro-level practice and materiality over the past few decades. This might be one of the topics for discussion at the forthcoming SIGCIS workshop, where I'm pleased to say that the panelists include people from the Smithsonian, Henry Ford Museum, Charles Babbage Institute, and Computer History Museum as well as academics from a variety of disciplines. http://www.sigcis.org/workshop11 Tom _______________________________________________ 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 -- Jonathan CoopersmithAssociate Professor Department of History Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-4326 979.845.7151 979.862.4314 fax http://aggiegaijin.blogspot.com/ ; Secretary Section L, History & Philosophy of ScienceAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)www.aaas.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
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
Tom et al, 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.
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
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 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, 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
Well, let's not point fingers solely at the Silicon Valley crowd - after all, IBM (to pick just one) has not made a historian's job easy, either. :-) I concur that hobbyist/collectors have been an important factor in saving what's been saved; just a few years ago I was known to opine that the history of the minicomputer era was being maintained by guys like me with stuff in our basements. The companies that had created these machines were either completely gone or merger'ed into oblivion (DG being subsumed by EMC a particularly pointed example), and unlike either mainframes (challenged by the mini) or PC/workstations (being outsold by mobile information devices today) the minicomputer completely disappeared. That's one reason I was so thrilled when I learned that Mr. Allen was taking this seriously and putting resources into preserving these machines not just as artifacts on a shelf but as working computers. The apparent paucity of scholarly work on the history of information technology subsequent to the first big successes, i.e. the minicomputer era, is what inspired me to pursue my Ph.D. I see more scholarly work lately, premised on the emergence of the PC/workstation, but I think there's still a lot of work to do regarding that interval between mainframes and PCs - which, loosely speaking, is both the focus of the LCM and of my research work. And the Information School environment seems to be a good fit. The interesting questions are often about what people did with these systems and why - in other words, how did information technology come to transform information science? When we consider the original use cases for computing technology, primarily focused around the arithmetic of business and secondarily that of science and engineering, one can envision an alternate timeline in which the creation, management and storage of information in its broadest sense might not have occurred. An information economy would not have developed without this evolving synergy between information science and information technology. And I started out as a hobbyist/collector - and I still have twenty or so machines in my basement at home. When I started here with the Living Computer Museum, my wife hoped they might go away. No, but the growth rate has slowed... and reflects personal interests that do not overlap with LCM's focus. -- Ian Ian King, Curator of Education Living Computer Museum A presentation of Vulcan, Inc. http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org
-----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Ceruzzi, Paul Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 5:55 AM To: 'Evan Koblentz'; 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 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
participants (6)
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Ceruzzi, Paul -
Coopersmith, Jonathan -
Evan Koblentz -
Ian King -
Info ＠ IT History Society -
Thomas Haigh