Fall 2015 - Charles Babbage Institute

CHARLES BABBAGE INSTITUTE
CENTER FOR THE HISTORY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
Vol. 37 No. 2
Fall 2015
In This Issue:
Director’s Desk
ACM Books and Computing History
CBI
SHOT 2015
CBI Completes NSF Computer Security
History Project
News from the Archives
IBM History: Gartner Group records at CBI
Researching Personal Computing
(Norberg Grant)
History of Information Technology in Hungary
Women Programmers in the 1950s and 1960s:
SHARE Statistics
Recent Publications
Featured Photograph
CHARLES BABBAGE INSTITUTE
CENTER FOR THE HISTORY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
Fall 2015
Vol. 37
No. 2
In This Issue:
Director’s Desk
3
ACM Books and Computing History
6
SHOT 2015
9
CBI Completes NSF Computer Security History Project
13
News from the Archives
14
IBM History: Gartner Group Records at CBI
15
Researching Personal Computing
(Norberg Grant)
16
Researching and Preserving the History of Information
Technology in Hungary
18
Women Programmers in the 1950s and 1960s:
SHARE Statistics
25
Recent Publications
28
Featured Photograph
30
CBI Newsletter Editor: Jeffrey R. Yost
Charles Babbage Institute
211 Andersen Library
University of Minnesota
222 21st Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
Email: [email protected]
Ph. (612) 624-5050
Fax: (612) 625-8054
www.cbi.umn.edu
The Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology is sponsored by the University of Minnesota and
the information technology community. Charles Babbage Institute Newsletter is a publication of the University of
Minnesota. The CBI Newsletter reports on Institute activities and other developments in the history of information
technology. Permission to copy all or part of this material is granted provided that the source is cited and a copy of the
publication containing the copied material is sent to CBI. © Charles Babbage Institute
2
Director’s Desk
In this column I often reflect on the state of the art in computing history. In the past, I’ve pointed
to quantitative evidence suggesting impressive growth and expansion in our field. After the
2012 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in Copenhagen, I reported that
more than 50 computing history papers were presented at the SIGCIS workshop or during the
main SHOT program itself — with 50 people attending the SIGCIS lunch meeting and 60 people
at the day-long SIGCIS Sunday workshop. The numbers were also impressive for the
subsequent SHOT meetings in Portland, Maine, and Dearborn, Michigan. As our report on this
year’s SHOT conference and SIGCIS workshop in Albuquerque makes clear, this quantitative
growth continues apace. CBI associate director Jeffrey Yost and I have a friendly wager pending
about when SHOT will become fully fifty percent computing history.
With this column I want to stress a slightly different theme: the qualitative evidence that
computing history is maturing in depth and sophistication. It certainly makes a difference if 50
or 100 computer historians attend the SIGCIS workshop, but equally vital is the quality of their
work and the recognition it gains in the wider world. Here, too, the evidence is pretty
impressive. Let me give you some highlights. 1
We always take pride in the stellar accomplishments of the CBI–Tomash fellows. The leading
figures in computing history are a roster of Tomash fellows, including former SIGCIS chair Tom
Haigh and present SIGCIS chair Andy Russell; editor-in-chief of IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing Nathan Ensmenger; and prize-winning authors Janet Abbate, Atsushi Akera,
Christophe Lécuyer, and Eden Medina. This year’s CBI–Tomash fellow Gerardo Con Diaz
(Yale University) continues with a notable streak of awards and accolades, including fellowships
also from the IEEE History Center, the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center, and the Business
History Conference’s Rovensky Prize — all for work on his dissertation “Intangible Inventions:
A History of Software Patenting in the United States, 1945-1985.” What is more, his article on
software copyright was awarded this year’s SHOT Levinson Prize and will be published in
Technology and Culture.
A paper in computing history was the recipient of this year’s highly competitive Robinson prize,
awarded to the best-presented paper at the annual SHOT conference. From 18 contenders for
this prize, Sarah McLennan (College of William and Mary) won for her presentation of
“Computing and the Color Line: Race, Gender, and Opportunity in Early Computing at NASA.”
Two pertinent observations are that Sarah represents the wider community of historians who are
discovering the importance of computing history, and that her session was jointly sponsored by
SIGCIS and EDITH, a new group within SHOT focusing on diversity issues.
1
For additional reflection on the field’s evolution and maturation, see James W. Cortada, “Studying History as it
Unfolds, Part 1: Creating the History of Information Technologies,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37
no. 3 (2015): 20-31.
3
Closer to home, I am proud of the work that graduate student Nic Lewis has been doing on the
Los Alamos High-Performance Computing History project. As we reported in the Fall 2014
newsletter, Nic spent last summer (and this summer as well) in residence at Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL). He is taking important steps to define and develop a dissertation project.
Nicholas Lewis and his award-winning poster at the LANL student symposium.
Last spring he passed his preliminary (qualifying) examinations and this month he successfully
defended his dissertation prospectus: “From Stretch to the Cray-1: Lab and Vendor Interaction in
the Shaping of Supercomputing at Los Alamos.” At SIGCIS this year he presented a wellreceived paper based on his unique access to LANL archival materials as well as oral histories
4
with participants, “Increasing the Yield: Nuclear Testing, Weapons Strategy, and Supercomputer
Selection at Los Alamos in the 1960s.” With a poster on this same topic he won a best-poster
award at the LANL student symposium in early August.
Deep contributions, notable awards, and increasing visibility: not only is computing history
expanding outward in scale and size; it is also becoming more sophisticated and gaining
accolades in the wider historical and technical communities. For 35 years, contributions to the
CBI Friends have kept CBI at the forefront of computing history, advancing the field with
archival collections, oral histories, research projects, and field-shaping publications. We invite
you to make a contribution today to maintain the health and vitality of computing history.
Thomas J. Misa
5
ACM Books and Computing History
ACM Books is a new publishing venture launched by the Association for Computing Machinery
in partnership with Morgan & Claypool Publishers. It covers the entire range of computer
science topics—and embraces the history of computing as well as social and ethical impacts of
computing. I was delighted to accept a position on the Editorial Board with responsibilities for
recruiting in this broad area. I looked at it this way: history of computing plus social and ethical
impacts of computing—what couldn’t we publish under this rubric?
In the Spring 2015 CBI Newsletter we featured the first computing history book in the ACM
Books series. Software entrepreneur John Cullinane assembled a unique memoir–oral history
collection based on CBI oral histories with his notable colleagues, his sources of inspiration, and
his own oral history. Smarter Than Their Machines: Oral Histories of Pioneers in Interactive
Computing (2014) contains John’s personal viewpoint on the emergence of interactive
computing, involving time-sharing, databases, and networking—including excerpts from 12 CBI
oral histories. We mentioned that the unusually quick production cycle of 2.5 months allowed
the volume to be out in time for Christmas last year.
Bernadette Longo’s Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals
appeared this fall. In her research Bernadette extensively used the Edmund Berkeley papers at
CBI, as well as archival sources at Harvard University, Berkeley’s FBI file, and several
collections at the Smithsonian including the Grace Murray Hopper papers. Last month we
enjoyed a publication countdown. The book was first available on the ACM Digital Library and
Morgan & Claypool websites and, a couple weeks later, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the
usual “fine bookstores.”
Berkeley will be familiar to CBI Newsletter
readers for multiple reasons. He was an early
advocate of computing within the insurance
industry, and so figures in Joanne Yates’
Structuring the Information Age: Life
Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth
Century (Johns Hopkins 2005). His notable
book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think
published in 1949 was the very first book on
computing written for a popular audience, an
emphasis that Berkeley kept throughout his
career in selling inexpensive computer “kits”
and publishing the journal Computers and
Automation (1951-73). His strongly voiced
anti-military stance across these years did not
always endear him to Grace Hopper and other
computer professionals whose careers were in
the military services. The book creates a
memorable portrait of a quirky and yet
unforgettable person.
6
The third volume in the ACM computing history series is just published. In 2013 Robin
Hammerman and Andy Russell, along with their colleagues at Stevens Institute of Technology,
hosted a conference to celebrate the many facets of Ada Lovelace, including her contributions to
early computing (with Charles Babbage), her notable place in Victorian culture (her father was
the noted poet Lord Byron), her iconic status within today’s contemporary “steampunk”
movement, and her enduring inspiration for women in computing. It is quite a legacy over two
centuries. Or, to be precise, exactly 200 years since the bicentennial of her birth is coming soon
in early December 2015.
We aim to have Ada’s Legacy
contribute a bit to the burgeoning
media interest in her
accomplishments and career. At
the least the volume covers an
immense and varied terrain in
appraising Ada’s legacy: we know
of no other 19th century woman
who, in addition to significant
mathematical attainments and
early computer programming, has
a programming language named
for her (covered in the book’s
chapters 3-5), figures prominently
in a contemporary science-fiction
literary genre (in chapters 8-10),
and inspires contemporary
computing reform. The book
contains Ada’s “Notes to the
Menabrea Sketch,” where her
contributions to mathematics and
computing are set down for
readers to examine themselves, as
well as historical information on
the Ada computer language.
Sydney Padua, author of the
recent graphic novel, The
Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace
and Babbage: The (Mostly) True
Story of the First Computer (2015), contributes three original drawings including the one that
graces the book’s cover.
It so happened that these three books have meaningful connections to the Charles Babbage
Institute, but this is no requirement. Other volumes in preparation include a technically oriented
history of software and a history of early networking. Please give me a holler if you have an idea
that might become an ACM Book.
Thomas J. Misa
7
8
SHOT 2015
The Society for the History of Technology held its 58th Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, October 8-11, 2015, at the Hotel Albuquerque, Old Town. CBI director Thomas Misa
organized two SHOT sessions, “Artificial Sciences? Technology, Education, and Professional
Networks in Early Computing,” and “Rewiring Public and Private: Computing for the Public
Sector and Public Interest.” He also led a Sunday SIG lunchtime discussion (with lunch
sponsored by the IEEE History Center) on the evolution of discipline-specific history centers and
diverse approaches.
CBI archivist Arvid Nelsen presented a SIGCIS paper “Concern for the ‘Disadvantaged’:
Computer Training Programs for Communities of Color in the Late 1960s.” He examined the
history and context of a short-lived ACM committee for the disadvantaged, as well as other
contemporaneous efforts launched to aid African Americans with IT education and jobs. This is
part of his larger book project on the history of computing and African Americans.
CBI’s Nicholas Lewis, a University of Minnesota History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
(HSTM) doctoral candidate, presented a SIGCIS paper entitled, “Increasing the Yield: Nuclear
Testing, Weapons Strategy, and Supercomputer Selection at Los Alamos in the 1960s.” This is
part of his larger work for LANL and dissertation research on the history of the lab’s HighPerformance Computing.
We are pleased that Dr. Janet Toland, a faculty member in the School of Information
Management at Victoria University of Wellington, has been a visiting research fellow at the
Charles Babbage Institute this semester. She is a recipient of an Association for Computing
Machinery grant to help support her travel and research at CBI. On the main program of SHOT,
she presented a paper entitled, “Computing Opportunities for All: ACM’s Role in Influencing
Public Policy on Universal Access and Education, 1960-2010.”
University of Minnesota’s HSTM faculty member Jennifer Karns Alexander gave a SHOT talk,
“Engineering, Religion, and Industrial Ethics: Jack Keiser and Industrial Missions in Post-war
Britain.” And HSTM doctoral student Dustin Studelska participated with the SHOT Graduate
Student Workshop as well as served as a graduate student advisor to SHOT’s Executive Council.
On Friday afternoon, SHOT awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal to Johan Schot, the Director
of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and Professor of the History of Technology and
Sustainability Transition Studies, University of Sussex. Schot, a member of the Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, is renowned for his interdisciplinary approach and
contributions to building infrastructure at the intersection of the history of technology, science
and technology policy, environmental sustainability, and social change. This has included
leadership roles with: “The Greening of Industry Network,” “The History of Technology in the
Netherlands Programme,” “The Tensions of Europe Network,” and the “The Knowledge
Network for System Innovation.” Schot and Misa have been long-time collaborators, co-editing
(with Arie Rip) Managing Technology in Society (Pinter 1995) and (with Ruth Oldenziel) a
special issue of History and Technology (2015). Schot’s inspiring da Vinci address challenged
historians of technology to conduct work to help check a globally pervasive form of capitalism
adverse to environmental sustainability and social well-being.
9
Overall, the SHOT meeting had a substantial number of sessions and individual papers devoted
to the history of computing, and a rich SIGCIS (Special Interest Group for Computers,
Information, and Society) Sunday full-day meeting offered many additional papers on computer
history. Immediately prior to SHOT, IEEE Annals of the History Editor-in-Chief Nathan
Ensmenger held the journal’s annual Editorial Board meeting.
The Friday SIGCIS lunch had its traditional set of introductions by new attendees, a vibrant book
auction (led by past chair and inspired auctioneer Thomas Haigh) to raise funds for upcoming
graduate student travel awards, and recognition of this year’s winners of these grants.
After brief opening remarks by SIGCIS Andrew Russell, Indiana University’s Nathan
Ensmenger kicked-off the Sunday SIGCIS meeting with a dynamic and deeply insightful
keynote lecture, “Materiality of the Virtual: An Environmental History of Computing.”
Undertaking the challenge posed in Jennifer Light’s provocative keynote from last year (to
extend our connections within and outside of the history discipline), Ensmenger’s talk
highlighted the deep geographical connection of transportation and communication
infrastructures—from railroads and the telegraph to telephony and computing networks. He
concentrated on the often-ignored environmental and labor impacts of our digital world. In
exploring Bitcoin “mining,” he detailed the substantial carbon imprint of a digital currency often
promoted as liberating. Ensmenger also called attention to the full life-cycle of digital devices
and the developing world junk heaps where a substantial amount of once first world-owned
digital devices now pollute. He also related the oppressive labor conditions of fabrication plants
in China and other low-cost manufacturing countries. The audience, nearing one-hundred
people, was moved by Ensmenger’s exquisitely crafted talk and slides, and a lively discussion
followed.
The Computer History Museum SIGCIS Prize for the best book published on the history of
computing was awarded to Rebecca Slayton’s Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and
Missile Defense, 1949-2012. This path-breaking work makes a major contribution to
understanding the development of complex software for missile defense, constructions of
expertise, and the arguments about underlying computing and software within missile defense
system policy debates.
The Michael S. Mahoney SIGCIS best article prize was awarded to David Nofre, Mark Priestley,
and Gerard Alberts’ Technology and Culture (January) 2014 article “When Technology Became
Language: The Origins of the Linguistic Conception of Computer Programming, 1950-1960.” In
this insightful article, the authors trace the origin of the language metaphor in modern computing
to cybernetics and explain how it evolved in the second half of the 1950s to a more abstract
meaning aligned to formal languages of logic and linguistics. The call for universal languages
was to enable the migration of code between machines, and represented a major step toward the
creation and growth of programming languages.
The general SHOT program had 30 papers on the history of computing: Colin Agur (Yale
University) “Re-Imagining the Indian State: Three Phases in Telecom Policy, 1947-present,”
Janet Abbate (Virginia Tech) “Good to Think With: Educational Visions of the Materiality of
Computing,” Margo Boenig-Lipstin (Harvard University) “Players, Not Users: The Role of
Computer Play in the Education of Citizens of the Information Age,” Scott Campbell (University
10
of Waterloo) “Professional Networks, Social Geography, and Early Computing in Canada,”
David Chavarria-Camacho and Ignacio Siles (Universidad de Costa Rica) “Between MATILDE
and the Internet: Computerizing the University of Costa Rica, 1968-1993,” Beatrice Choi
(Northwestern University) “Layers of Myth and Magic: The Role of the ‘Artist Class’ in
Brazilian Technology Transfer and the Myth of Use Neutrality,” Gerardo Con Diaz (Yale
University) “Ontological Contests: Patent Law and the Nature of Computer Programs, 19631972,” Kevin Driscoll (Microsoft Research) “Building a Grassroots Internet: Technical Culture
and the Dial-Up Bulletin-board System,” Quinn DuPont (University of Toronto) and Bradley
Fidler (University of California-Los Angeles) “The Co-Development of Early Computer
Network and Cryptography Infrastructure,” Sebastian Dziallas (University of Kent) “The
Evolution and Purpose of Computing Curricula (1960s to 2000s),” Evan Helper-Smith
(Princeton University) “‘The Sins of our Forefathers’: Chemists, Information Systems, and the
Elusive Ideal of Unique Chemical Names,” Marie Hicks (Illinois Institute of Technology)
“Computer Love: Sex, Social Order, and Technological Matchmaking at the Dawn of the
Electronic Age, 1950-1979,” Daniel Holbrook (Marshall University) “Clean, Pure, and Orderly,”
Charles House (InnovaScapes Institute) “Emergence of Corporate Wide-area Computer
Communication Networks,” Bernadette Longo (New Jersey Institute of Technology) “Who Will
Benefit from U.S. Computer Development? Establishing Open Communication Channels for
Technology Development after World War II,” Sarah McLennan (College of William and Mary)
“Computing and the Color Line: Race, Gender, and Opportunity in Early Computing at NASA,”
Andrew Meade McGee (University of Virginia) “Defining Public Interest Computing: The Early
Washington ACM Community and Discussions of Policy, Governance, and Democracy in the
Age of the Mainframe, 1947-1968,” Andrew Nelson (University of Oregon) “Robust Action and
the Rise of the CCRMA-lites: The Emergence of Computer Music at Stanford,” Irina Nikivincze
(Higher School of Economics) “Making a ‘Science of the Artificial’: Careers and Contributions
of the first Doctoral Women in Computer Science,” Joseph November (University of South
Carolina) “George Forsythe, the ACM, and Creating a ‘Science of the Artificial’,” Tolu
Odumosu (University of Virginia) “Why Diversity Was Crucial to the Creation and Adoption of
the GSM Standard for Mobile Communication,” Dongoh Park (Indiana University) “Building a
Digital Obligatory Gateway: Sociotechnical Development of Public Key Infrastructure in South
Korea,” Elizabeth Petrick (New Jersey Institute of Technology) “From the Dynabook to Autism
Apps: Tracing the Ideals of Tablet Computing,” Craig Robertson (Northeastern University)
“Information as Modular: Organizing Paper in Early 20th Century Filing Cabinets,” Andrew L.
Russell (Stevens Institute of Technology) “Modular Design: Project Tinkertoy and the Building
Materials of the Information Age,” Ramesh Subramanian (Quinnipiac University) “High
Technology and the Developing State: The Development of India’s PARAM Supercomputer,”
Ksenia Tatarchenko (New York University) “‘Primum Non Nocere’ [First, Do No Harm]:
Computer Expertise, Responsibility, and Cold War International Encounters,” Janet Toland
(Victoria University of Wellington) “Computing Opportunities for All: ACM’s Role in
Influencing Public Policy on Universal Access and Education, 1960-2010,” Gregg Pascal
Zachary (Arizona State University) “Digital Africa: Researching the History of Computers and
Culture in the Sub-Saharan.”
SIGCIS had 24 papers on the history of computing (and a digital humanities roundtable): Nathan
Ensmenger (Indiana University) “The Materiality of the Virtual: An Environmental History of
Computing” [Keynote/Opening Plenary], William Aspray (University of Texas-Austin) “The
History of NSF Programs to Broaden Participation in Computing,” Amy Sue Bix (Iowa State
University) “Technical Work and Gendered Professionalization in the 1970s and 1980s: The
11
Association for Women in Computing,” Eileen Clancy (City University of New York) “Abacus
Computing in the Age of Electronics: Sekiko Yoshida and the Early U.S. Space Program,”
Gerardo Con Diaz (Yale University) “IBM and Patent Reform in the United States, 1965-1968,”
Quinn DuPont (University of Toronto) “Plaintext, Encryption, Ciphertext: A History of
Cryptography and Its Influence on Contemporary Society,” Bradley Fidler (University of
California-Los Angeles) “The Emergence of Border Router Protocols and Autonomous Systems
on the Internet, c. 1968-1989,” Megan Finn (University of Washington) “‘I am So Anxious to
Hear’: Improving Information Infrastructure,” Reem Hilu (Northwestern University) “‘The
Ultimate Doll’: Microprocessor Controlled Talking Dolls and Girls’ Play Practices in the
Home,” Eric Hintz (Smithsonian Institution) “Susan Kare: Design Icon,” Devin Kennedy
(Harvard University) “What was ‘Real’ about ‘Real-Time’?: Engineering Responsive Computers
from Whirlwind to Vanguard,” Kimon Keramidas (New York University) “Digital Humanities,
SIGCIS, and SHOT” [Organizer and Chair of Roundtable], Nicholas Lewis (University of
Minnesota) “Increasing the Yield: Nuclear Testing, Weapons Strategy, and Supercomputer
Selection at Los Alamos in the 1960s,” Rebecca Miller (Science and Technology Policy
Institute) “Communication of Disaster-Related Information,” Christine Mitchell (New York
University) “Bright Side of a Dark Age: Developments in Machine Translation, 1966-1992,” R.
Arvid Nelsen (Charles Babbage Institute) “Concern for the ‘Disadvantaged’: Computer Training
Programs for Communities of Color in the Late 1960s,” Laine Nooney (Georgia Institute of
Technology) “The Infrastructure of Expertise, or What Game Engines Allow,” Joseph November
(University of South Carolina) “The Medical Record and the 50-Year Challenge to Computing,”
Camille Paloques-Berges (Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers) “Unix Networks
Cooperation as a Shadow Infrastructure for an Early French Internet Experience (1983-1993),”
Giuditta Parolini (Technische Universitat Berlin and Berliner Zentrum fur Wissensgeschichte)
“From Paper to Bit: A Digital Life for the Records of Long-term Experiments in Agriculture,”
Eric Rau (Hagley Museum and Library) “A Future for History (of Technology, Science, and the
Environment): Understanding the Challenges of Preserving Corporate Records in the Digital
Era,” Andrew Schrock (University of Southern California) “From Black Hats to White Hats:
Constructing the ‘Ethical Hacker’,” Brent Strang (Stony Brook University) “Peripheral
Convergence Through User-Centered Design: A Case-Study of Logitech,” Lee Vinsel (Stevens
Institute of Technology) “ICTs, Auto Safety, and Systems Maintenance: The Toyota Unintended
Acceleration Recalls, 2009-2011,” Jacob Ward (University College London) “Research
Transplanted and Privatised Post Office/British Telecom R&D in the Digital and Information
Era.”
Jeffrey R. Yost
12
CBI Completes NSF Computer Security
History Project
We are pleased to report the completion this fall of our successful NSF-funded project, “Building
an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.” We reported on this project following our
June 2014 workshop that brought together computer security professionals with academic
historians and analysts. It was a notable group with intense and focused discussion and
interchange. Subsequently to the workshop, we worked closely with authors and this spring
published a set of six peer-reviewed articles in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.
Support came from National Science Foundation (NSF CNS-TC 1116862).
The project had four major deliverables, and we achieved
success with each. First, we completed a set of 31 oral
history interviews with a truly stellar list of computer
security pioneers. Our first interview in May 2012 was
with Roger Schell while our final two interviews in June
2015 were with William Wulf and Anita Jones, each
distinguished computer scientists. The recordings are 1.5 to
5 hours in length, totaling 84.5 hours, and the transcripts
total 2,320 pages. A complete list of interviewees is
available on the main page of the second deliverable, a
knowledge-networking wiki site. 1 The wiki site contains an
unusually rich set of computer-security resources, including
publications, timelines, conferences — a total of 230
Steve Lipner presenting at CBI’s June 2014
entries. It has been used already in education, and we
Computer Security History Workshop.
hope to expand it during a follow-on project. A third
deliverable was a set of scholarly publications, including the first set of Annals articles, a second
set to be published next year, and six additional CBI presentations at scholarly conferences. The
fourth major result is a set of print and archival collections documenting computer security,
which includes collections from Stephen Lukasik, Steve Lipner, Lance Hoffman, Thomas W.
Bailey, Gene Spafford, and Richard Kain as well as archival materials from AUTODIN-2 (19642010).
Projects such as this one are major opportunities for shaping the field of computer history, and
they fully engage the CBI staff. Jeffrey Yost conducted the majority of the interviews. Three
graduate-student research assistants (Nicholas Lewis, Erik Norquest, and Jonathan Clemens)
worked on the project at various times, while two undergraduates (Richard Halkyard and Patrick
Severin) made significant contributions as well. CBI’s admin Katie Charlet efficiently handled
the logistics of recordings, transcripts, editing, and posting of interviews, while Arvid Nelsen is
in charge of all of CBI’s archival and print acquisitions. If CBI’s earlier projects in networking
and software history are any guide, the short-term results of CBI publications and collections
lead to longer-term developments where additional researchers draw on the “infrastructure” of
1
The wider set of security-related CBI oral histories, including those done with James Bidzos, Martin Hellman,
Donn Parker, Peter Patton, and Willis Ware prior to this NSF project are at <http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/
11299/59493/browse?type=subject&order=ASC&rpp=20&value=Computer+security>.
13
CBI resources, including oral histories and archival collections. And for immediate results, have
a look at the sources for Wikipedia entries on Dorothy Denning, Peter Denning, Lance Hoffman,
Butler Lampson, Carl Landwehr, Peter Neumann, Susan H. Nycum, Donn Parker, Roger Schell,
Gene Spafford, and Tom Van Vleck. You’ll find CBI resources appearing everywhere. 2
Thomas J. Misa
News from the Archives
Collections at CBI
In the last newsletter, Tom Misa reported on the completion of the large project that the CBI
Archives undertook with the University Libraries cataloging staff to increase the visibility and
accessibility of the books in the James W. Cortada Collection. Since that time, we have
additionally completed cataloging of the Erwin Tomash book collection (CBI 75) and the books
and serials in the Carl Machover Collection. This increased visibility continues to drive requests
for these incredible resources.
CBI has long been known primarily for its remarkable collections of archival collections and our
storage facility has been set-up specifically to accommodate maximizing space for standard
archival boxes. While book collections were waiting for cataloging they were able to be housed
in such boxes. With increased visibility and demand, however, we are now reconfiguring space
in our caverns in order to create a section dedicated to books and serials. We are drawing on the
state-of-the-art storage and retrieval systems established by the Minnesota Library Access Center
— a system that organizes print materials by size in order to maximize space. A great deal of
work has already taken place, relocating collections and making modifications to collection
shelving. Work will continue in the weeks and months to come in rehousing publications and
updating records.
This work will enable CBI to further develop and grow this fabulous collection of historic
resources — a task in which we are already engaged! Since the last newsletter we have also
acquired remarkable collections on computer security from Eugene Spafford and Rick Smith,
computer design software and associated user-groups from Mark Simonson, and the personal
computing library of Eric Weiss, including the books authored by Weiss himself and other
remarkable areas of focus (such as those on artificial intelligence). The books constitute only one
portion of Weiss’s generous gift to CBI, which will also be the home for his collection of
personal papers that includes records pertaining to his work with the Association for Computing
Machinery, Sun Oil Company, the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, and Lehigh University.
CBI also received from Data Systems Analysts, Inc., the collection of records that document the
development, installation, use, and history of AUTODIN, the earliest and longest running
computer network developed by Data Systems Analysts, Inc. for the U.S. Department of
Defense. This is another remarkable set of materials in original formats — both physical and
digital. I am grateful to all of our donors for making the materials that tell the stories of their
2
See “what links here” to CBI at
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Charles_Babbage_Institute>
14
contributions to computing accessible to CBI’s local, national, and international community of
researchers.
R. Arvid Nelsen
IBM History: Gartner Group Records at CBI
Gideon Gartner was one of the most authoritative and respected “IBM watchers” of the twentieth
century. It is easy to forget that between the 1960s and the early years of the new century,
IBM’s every move, every product introduction or pronouncement was tracked by stock brokers,
share holders, competitors, and customers — that entire knowledge-based consulting companies
grew up to provide information and insights about IBM. Gartner’s was often considered to be
the best informed. Now Gartner’s business records have become available to historians to study
at CBI. And they are fabulous.
Gartner kept very detailed records of his correspondence and business, of his analysis and data,
drafts of his newsletters and their final versions. The records at CBI include his scribblings,
speeches, and presentations, and in addition his collection of what others had to say about IBM.
Almost as soon as they became available, I had to rush over to CBI to see these for my research
about IBM. The value of his papers is enhanced by his deep knowledge of the industry and IBM,
and the extraordinary level of detail with which he approached his work. I think he also had the
world’s smallest handwriting; no person could put more data and text on a single sheet of paper
than Gartner!
Imagine my surprise as I opened up box after box of materials, seeing unfolding before me
essentially the history of the computer industry from the early 1970s to the end of the century,
week by week, year by year. Laid out before me were musings about strategy, corporate intent,
pricing scenarios, analysis of different markets, such as for large and small machines and
software, details about IBM’s rivals, lawsuits, and press coverage — it was all there. The
finding aid was useful and accurate. The papers had buried within the folders’ formal topics
much other useful material. For example, in folders that were clearly marked “IBM,” there is
also useful information about rivals such as Burroughs and Control Data. The bulk of Gartner’s
focus was American, but there is some commentary on Europe and Asia.
After spending several days examining these papers, I concluded that it would be difficult to
study the business history of information technology in the US of the second half of the twentieth
century without examining this wide-ranging and foundational collection. It represents an
important addition to a rapidly growing series of collections on the business and institutional
players in the world of computing held at CBI.
James W. Cortada
CBI Senior Research Fellow
CBI is pleased to announce the availability of Jeff Yost’s 124-page oral history with Gideon
Gartner at <http://hdl.handle.net/11299/174965>.
15
Needles in a Haystack: The Challenges of
Researching Personal Computing at the CBI
(Norberg Grant)
In the summer of 2015, I received the Norberg Travel Grant to conduct research for my
dissertation focusing on the relationship between personal computers and the private sphere.
Popular lore about personal computing often focuses on the Californian computer scene and the
libertarian leanings of some early enthusiasts, and this contributes to the view that personal
computers have always been involved in discussions of public policy. I wanted to examine how
this entwinement of computers with the public sphere occurred since the personal computer was
marketed as a consumer device meant for domesticity and the private market—competing
notions of the “private.” As many have argued, a strict boundary between public and private is
problematic. As Michael Warner notes, however, “attempts to frame public and private as sharp
distinction or antinomy have invariably come to grief, while attempts to collapse or do without
them have proven equally unsatisfying.” 1 In my dissertation, I demonstrate that although early
computer adopters rarely made delineations about boundaries, their discussions about the
personal computer hinged around competing notions of the “private.”
Sadly, finding resources on personal computing was challenging, since there is almost no
scholarly research on the topic. This meant that I was unable to draw on other scholars to help
me find pertinent sources. At first, I looked towards journalistic narratives, but these leaned
towards hagiography. Rather than focusing on a select group of “geniuses,” I wanted to examine
enthusiasts and general users to gain a wider perspective. I knew that computer magazines and
newsletters were some of the best sources to craft my narrative, but they were often difficult to
locate in archives.
Luckily, many early adopters of personal computers have remained in the computer industry.
They often create websites dedicated to older machines and the popular literature surrounding
them. Under the direction of Jason Scott, the Internet Archive has consolidated the material on
these websites into a single space, along with scanning material not available elsewhere. This
proved invaluable as the Internet Archive has no limit on how you work with its sources. I wrote
a small script that “scraped” the magazines along with putting them into different years, allowing
me to considerably shorten my time gathering material. I believe these online sources will prove
increasingly important as computer historians begin to work more on personal computing.
Despite the large number of materials online, I knew they did not tell the whole story. I still
needed to go to traditional archives, such as the CBI. Unfortunately, studying the personal
computers at CBI proved challenging. Few collections related directly to my topic. This is not
to say that there are no sources; simply, that finding them can be difficult. Some particularly
useful boxes were of computer magazines, such as 80 Micro Programming, TRS-80
Microcomputer News, Computer Hobbyists, and the unique Reality Hackers. CBI also has a full
collection of Dr. Dobbs Journal, which I previously had a tough time finding. Other useful
1
Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York; Cambridge, Mass.: Zone Books ; Distributed by MIT
Press, 2002), 29.
16
collections were the Auerbach Associates Market and Product Reports collection and the Market
and Product Reports collection. These collections allowed me to get statistics about different
computing products to see how fast consumers adapted them. The material on foreign computer
markets was especially interesting. I was also surprised by how much there was about
peripherals. While they do not play a big part in my own work, they will be very useful for
researchers moving forward. Just make sure to dedicate some time to these collections since
they are very large.
As with any good archive trip, there were a lot of surprises. One was Computer User magazine,
which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The magazine is critical for understanding the
changes in the Minnesota computing industry, and because of Minnesota’s importance to the
industry, also provided an indication of what was happening in computing more broadly. In
addition, I found the Donn B. Parker papers offered an amazing overview of changing ideas of
computer crime. Discussions of computer ethics, property, and law permeate the collection.
Finally, I also scoured the many collections dedicated to mainframe computing. It was
interesting to see how mainframe computer leaders saw the computer’s transformation to a
consumer device.
My advice to all researchers is to get in contact with Arvid Nelsen, the current CBI archivist. It
is hard to put into words just how helpful he was throughout the whole process. Because I
believed that much of the personal computing literature would be scattered throughout other
collections, he had to retrieve a copious amount of boxes. As I went through them, I took
photos, but some collections only had a few items; this meant he was always rushing in and out
giving me new boxes. I am also grateful for Tom Misa and Jeffrey Yost. 2 I had great
discussions with both, and they recommended other scholars working on similar topics. The
extension of CBI’s collection is astounding, and despite staying there for three weeks, there is
still more I believe I can return to.
Nabeel Siddiqui
Ph.D. Student, William and Mary
2
Jeffrey Yost, “Exploring the Archives: Resources on Personal Computing,” CBI Fall 2012 Newsletter,
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/nsl/v34n2.pdf.
17
Researching and Preserving the History of
Information Technology in Hungary
Abstract
This article describes the special characteristics of the history of information technology in
Hungary, and the major initiatives undertaken to research and preserve the achievements of the
key organizations and their accomplishments. The research methodology used and the future
plans are also outlined.
Special Characteristics of the History of Information Technology in Hungary
The evolution of IT in Hungary following World War II was defined first and foremost by the
country’s location within the Eastern Bloc – or as it was commonly known – “behind the iron
curtain.” This impacted the development of the IT industry in two ways. First, as the economy
and research were centrally controlled, the prohibition of or support for IT was determined by the
political decisions of the Soviet Union. Second, the export restrictions imposed by the West
prevented the spread of the new advanced technologies included in the “CoCom list” – the
common term for the list of strategically important IT products that were subject to the export
embargo as determined by the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. It
wasn’t until 1994, when the embargo was abolished, that the latest IT products and applications
were able to be imported.
This hindrance was, in many cases, turned into an advantage. The otherwise unavailable
technology had to be redesigned or reconstructed using great creativity and with local talent,
resulting in the successful development of a home-grown Hungarian IT industry whose
production was not only able to meet local demand but also generated substantial export
revenues. For example, two major Hungarian computer producers, VIDEOTON and KFKI, were
able to produce many thousands of computers, the majority of which were exported. As many
detailed studies have been published about the history of IT in Hungary [1,2,3], we will limit
ourselves here to the efforts to conserve the artifacts from this era.
The history of the preservation of IT artifacts in Hungary, and the IT exhibition in Szeged
In the best of cases, objects from the past are preserved and live on in a country’s national
museums. In Hungary, the Budapest Museum of Technology, which is part of the Hungarian
Museum of Science, Technology and Transportation, provides a home for computers with
significant Hungarian ties. For example, the museum houses the first Hungarian
electromechanical computer, MESZ 1, and one of the first large-scale computers used in
Hungary, the URAL 2. These computers can be viewed in the museum’s “Technical Study
Store.”
18
The MESZ-1 and URAL II computers in the Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport
Due to the rapid cycle of development and obsolescence of computers, the collection of the
Museum of Technology was unable to keep pace. This is where the John von Neumann
Computer Society, which was established in 1968 to support the fast-developing IT profession,
saw a role for itself in the preservation of industry artifacts. Already in the mid 1970’s, the John
von Neumann Computer Society’s Director, Győző Kovács, realized that computers that had
been purchased at great cost, but had been replaced as they became obsolete, should be preserved
to educate future generations. In order to implement this idea, a three-person “Board of IT
History” was formed within the John von Neumann Computer Society. Achieving this goal was
far from easy, however. As many early computers had already been relegated to the junkyard,
only a few examples from the early years were able to be preserved. The collection efforts were
also hindered by the requirement at the time to offer computers that were no longer needed to 20
other companies before they could be donated to museums.
Győző Kovács, and his friend Dániel Muszka, a mathematician in the cybernetics laboratory at
the University of Szeged, started to search out and collect computers that were slated for the
scrap heap. Later on, their colleague, Mihály Bohus, also joined the crusade. Thanks to their
heroic and self-sacrificing efforts, almost 200 tons of computers were acquired and housed in
temporary warehouses. Together, they preserved the computers and from time to time organized
exhibitions.
A big turn in events occurred when the Municipality of Szeged, with the support of the European
Union, built the Szentgyögyi Albert Agóra cultural center in Szeged, where, thanks to the John
von Neumann Computer Society’s funding and the personal efforts of the Director, in 2012 a
permanent 1300 m2 exhibition entitled “The Future’s Past” was established. The painstakingly
acquired collection exhibits many hundreds of computer configurations and many thousands of
western and eastern computers from the earlier periods of IT history [4].
To this very day, the John von Neumann Computer Society, which consists of 2,300 individuals,
100 institutions, and 23 professional associations among its members, aspires to adhere to its
motto to: “Uphold the values of the past, adapt to the present, and influence the future.”
19
The Szentgyörgyi Albert Agóra IT history exhibition in Szeged [5]
Personal IT Collections
In addition to the Budapest Museum of Technology and the Szeged IT Exhibition, many ITrelated personal collections are forming in Hungary, most of which are collections of personal
computers and computer games [6,7,8,9]. Amongst these, one of the biggest and most
widespread collections is that of the author of this article, a professor at the Óbuda University.
As a result of more than 40 years of systematic collection, many thousands of artifacts were
accumulated, many of significant historical value. The main areas of focus are early calculation
devices, key electronic components significant to the history of IT, data storage devices, personal
and portable computers, and communication devices.
The collection traces the many steps and stages in the development of IT products, and
showcases how many significant inventions build upon a series of prior innovations. In many
areas, the aim is for the collection to be exhaustive, for example to contain all of the electronic
components used in Hungarian IT products, including electron tubes, transistors, integrated
circuits, processors, etc.
Select items from the collection are displayed in both the Óbuda University’s main hall and the
Budapest University of Technology and Economics on a rotating basis. Grouped around a
specific theme, the displays give a brief history of the items, the problem they were designed to
solve, their significance in the history of IT, and their major applications. The collection is also
used to illustrate the lessons taught in the course “Chapters in the Cultural History of Information
Technology.”
20
Historical IT components from László Kutor private collection
The Objectives and Accomplishments of the IT History Forum
In 2009, the John von Neumann Computer Society established the IT History Forum, with the
following objectives: to organize events that provide an opportunity for those who played
definitive roles in the development of the Hungarian IT industry to meet and share their
experiences in living and shaping the history of the IT profession; to support research in the
history of IT in Hungary; to collect and preserve significant documents and the oral history of
this period; and to establish a website dedicated to the work of the Forum.
Events Commemorating the History of IT in Hungary
Approximately once a month, the IT History Forum organizes an event in a series of “Great
Hungarian IT Workshops.” Each event is focused on an institution - or the individuals working
in an institution - that made significant contributions to the history of IT in Hungary. The events
were organized with the active participation of two to three key individuals from these
institutions, which in most cases had long since ceased to exist. If the institutions or their
successors were still in existence, the events were held at the original site, or more likely at the
host institute, the Óbuda University, which was able to accommodate the often two hundred or
more participants. An essential element of the events was the video recording of all the
presentations, which were most often given by the most renowned experts in their fields. Their
recounting of the past events and achievements constitutes a valuable oral history of the IT
industry in Hungary. To date, 28 such events have been held, with more than 100 hours of video
recordings available on YouTube. The funding for the video recordings was provided by the
John von Neumann Computer Science Society.
Recently, the IT History Forum launched a new series of events entitled “Then and Now” in
which the past and present of a given profession is presented. To date, three such events have
been held focused on watchmaking, data centers, and the meteorology profession, which has
always been reliant on intense data processing. These events featured the elite within their
profession as presenters. The presentations and supporting documents, data and articles are all
available on the Forum’s website.
21
IT History Data Collection
Another critical focus of the IT History Forum’s research efforts is the collection of data related
to Hungarian IT institutions, especially those involved in the development of IT products, or
important applications of international products in Hungary as well as data related to individuals
who made significant contributions to the early stage of computer science in Hungary. Using a
standardized template, many students from the Óbuda University who were enrolled in the
“Chapters in the Cultural History of Information Technology course” (designed and taught by
the author of this article) also contributed to this data collection. All of the material is available
on the Forum’s website and is in the process of undergoing peer review.
Profiles in IT History
In 2010, the board of the IT History Forum decided to conduct video interviews with prominent
leaders from the early period of IT history in Hungary. The guiding principles in the section of
these profiles in oral history were (1) that the individuals be experts in their field and (2) older
than 70 years. Over the past four years, the John von Neumann Computer Science Society has
financed the production of eight profiles each year. Each interview lasted at least one hour and
focused on approximately 10 questions. Afterwards, the interview was edited to around 20
minutes and put on YouTube, with the approval of the person interviewed. The interviews were
also included in the Hungarian National Digital Archive. The profiles brought to light new
information that is significant to the understanding of the history of IT in Hungary. For this
reason, the IT History Forum decided to make the transcript of the entire interview available to
researchers. To date, 32 profiles and eight full transcriptions have been completed.
Development of the Archives of the History of Hungarian IT
Through the organization of events and collecting of information and artifacts, it became
increasingly clear that a system needed to be developed to ensure the sustainability and easy
access to the increasingly large body of information regarding the history of IT in Hungary. The
IT History Forum turned to the John von Neumann Computer Science Society with a proposal
for the development of the Archives of the History of IT in Hungary. The archives would be
devoted to the preservation of information, facts, and documents with significance in the history
of IT. The archives would focus on information that could be digitally stored, not on the
collection of artifacts.
Following approval from the John von Neumann Computer Science Society, work began on the
implementation plan in January 2013. Soon after, with the assistance of a team of 14 technical
experts who volunteered their time, the collection and processing of documents related primarily
to the pre-1990 period began. The work continues to collect key documents pertaining to ITrelated institutions, informations about hardware and software products, applied systems, and
research in the history of IT in Hungary and significant events. In addition to the collection of
data and documents, including photos and videos, pertaining to these categories, the archives
also contains substantial information about the individuals who contributed to all of the above.
Another important function is the secure storage of the information collected. With this in mind,
the John von Neuman Computer Science Society signed an agreement with the Hungarian
National Informatics Infrastructure (NIIF) for unlimited secure storage of the digitally archived
22
material. Additional agreements were entered into for the storage of other materials. The
information found on traditional media (i.e. paper documents, books, etc.) is stored in the
National Technical Information Center and Library of the Budapest University of Technology
and Economics. Finally, the video materials, particularly those created as part of the “Profiles”
series, are stored in the Hungarian National Digital Archives.
As of the summer of 2015, the archives include 802 documents, information on 112 institutions
and 97 products; 94 studies; “Who is Who in Hungarian IT” 56, “Those who are not with us”
(individuals who have made outstanding contributions) 158, 31 IT History Forum events,
previous 537 IT–related events; 3 industry wide applications; 32 “Profiles” 8 full transcripts of
the oral history interviews; 530 photos; close to 100 hours of video recordings of presentations
given by 305 presenters at IT History Forum events.
Team of experts building the Hungarian IT history archives. From left to right: Károly Megyery, Miklós Havass,
Tamás Koltai, Edit Sántáné-Tóth, Bálint Dömölki, Eszter Kertészné Gérecz, Árpád Bedő , Erika Nyáriné Grófcsik ,
Géza Álló, Pál Simon, Eleonóra Dettai. Members not pictured: János Ballai, Bálint Bereczki, Mihály Bohus, László
Kutor
Processing of all materials to be archived is conducted by a volunteer expert team, with the
support of a professional librarian. Certain jobs that require special expertise (for example, video
editing, database management, website management) have been outsourced to professionals.
Future plans
The organizers of the archives feel it is important to continue the work they started. However,
they also work to inspire others to collect experiences and memories and to preserve the relevant
documents that are still available. As a result, a cadre of IT professionals are actively engaged in
the collection and processing of information related to the history of IT in Hungary. Another
important objective is to spark the interest of the younger generation in the history of IT.
Already, a course is offered at the Óbuda University in the history of IT. In addition to this, the
creation of research projects and supporting scholarships would greatly contribute to the
development and sustainability of research into the history of IT. Another goal of the IT History
Forum in Hungary is to develop active partnerships with other international organizations
23
sharing the same mandate, such as the Charles Babbage Institute, which has a decades-long
history of collecting, processing, preserving and publishing information about the history of
information technology.
Dr. László Kutor
Associate Professor, Óbuda University
President, IT History Forum, John von Neumann Computer Science Society
References
1. Zsuzsa Szentgyörgyi, “The Short History of Computing in Hungary,” IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1999.
2. Mária Raffai, “Computing Behind the Iron Curtain and Beyond Hungarian National
Perspective,” History of Computing and Education 2. WCC 2006 Ed. John Impagliazzo.
3. Bálint Dömölki, “Computing in Hungary – Through the History of Five Institutions.” In:
Proceedings of the 8th IT STAR Workshop on History of Computing, Szeged, Hungary,
2014. ISBN 978-88-98091-34-8, pp.80-93.
4. Gábor Képes, Géza Álló A jövő múltja Neumanntól az Internetig [The Future’s Past
from Neumann to the Internet] NJSZT 2013 ISBN: 976-615-5036-06-4.
5. István Alföldi, Mihaly Bohus, Daniel Muszka, Gabor Miltenyi, “History and Highlights
of a Computer Museum.” In: Proceedings of the 8th IT STAR Workshop on History of
Computing, Szeged, Hungary, 2014. ISBN 978-88-98091-34-8, pp.154-168.
6. Károly Nagy’s Collection: http://retropages.uw.hu
7. Gábor Szakács’s Collection: http://retrocomputer.network.hu/video/computerek/
i_szegedi_retro_szamitogep_es_videojatek_kiallitas
8. Sándor Orsovai’s Collection:
http://logout.hu/cikk/retro_szamitogep_kiallitas_beszamolo/elozmeny_felkeszules.html
9. Dr. László Kutor’s Collection: https://youtu.be/GZiKLVZoFSw,
https://youtu.be/FJqzxpddSnI , https://youtu.be/s65LZIvJ2ZU
24
Women Programmers in the 1950s and
1960s: SHARE Statistics
CBI is conducting a research project for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation on “Tripling
Women’s Participation in Computing (1965-1985).” Graduate student research
assistant Will Vogel has submitted an article to IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing from the project, based on a longitudinal survey of the trade
journal Datamation and company archival materials; he also compiled a unique dataset
on women in computing, based on the IBM SHARE user group records held at
CBI. Bureau of Labor Statistics data begin in 1971. Vogel here reports on his research
to count the women attending the SHARE meetings (1958-72) to estimate the proportion
of professional women in the computing industry. - TJM
Bureau of Labor Statistics on the gender composition of the computer industry workforce are
available from 1971, providing an invaluable quantitative view of the influx of women into the
industry in the 1970s and 1980s, and the subsequent decline of female participation over the past
three decades. 1 Quantitative data for earlier decades is lacking, however. Given the importance
of the late 1950s and 1960s in the history of computing, with the rapid growth of the computer
workforce in those decades, quantitative estimates of gender composition provide a useful
prelude to BLS data from subsequent decades. 2 I have used statistics compiled from SHARE,
Inc., meeting reports to generate such an estimate. 3 SHARE was an unofficial user group for
IBM computers, founded in 1955 and rapidly growing to meeting sizes in the thousands by the
early 1960s. 4
SHARE met twice a year, publishing meeting reports which included directories of attendees
listed by first name (or initial), last name, and institutional affiliation. The names in selected
SHARE reports were tallied as ‘male’ (e.g. John, Michael), ‘female’ (e.g. Ruth, Margaret),
‘ambiguous’ (e.g. Lynn, Pat), or ‘initials,’ if only initials were given. The results, with meeting
totals, are given in Table 1 below:
1
The percentage of the computer industry workforce which was female almost tripled between the 1970s and the
mid-1980s, from about 15% in 1971 to 38% in 1985. See Caroline Clarke Hayes, “Computer Science: The
Incredible Shrinking Woman,” in Thomas Misa, ed; Gender Codes: Why Women are Leaving Computing, Hoboken,
NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2010, p. 33. See also Rosemary Wright and Jerry A. Jacobs, “Male Flight from Computer
Work: A New Look at Occupational Resegregation and Ghettoization,” American Sociological Review 59 no. 4
(1994), p. 529.
2
For the importance of the 1950s and 1960s in the history of programming, see Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer
Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 2010.
3
I am grateful to Jeffrey Yost for suggesting this line of inquiry.
4
See Atsushi Akera, “Voluntarism and the Fruits of Collaboration: The IBM User Group, Share,” Technology and
Culture 42 no. 4 (2001), pp. 710-736.
25
Year:
Male:
Female:
Ambiguous:
Initials:
Total:
SHARE 11
5
192
20
2
68
282
1960
SHARE 14
6
284
44
12
299
639
1961
SHARE 17
556
101
14
191
862
1963
SHARE 20
676
91
18
198
983
1964
SHARE 23 7
837
104
13
87
1041
1966
SHARE 26
604
56
14
622
1296
1967
SHARE 29
1158
94
16
176
1444
1970
SHARE 34
8
1740
163
35
12
1950
1972
SHARE 38 9
1481
135
36
17
1669
1958
Meeting Number:
Table 1: SHARE Raw Data, 1958-1972
The percentages of total meeting attendees for all four categories are given in Table 2, below.
Note that while the percentage of names whose gender is ambiguous remains consistently low at
1-2%, the percentage of initials varies widely, from a high around 48% to a low of less than 1%.
Year:
Meeting Number:
Male:
Female:
Ambiguous:
Initials:
1958
SHARE 11
68.09%
7.09%
0.71%
24.11%
1960
SHARE 14
44.44%
6.89%
1.88%
46.79%
1961
SHARE 17
64.50%
11.72%
1.62%
22.16%
1963
SHARE 20
68.77%
9.26%
1.83%
20.14%
1964
SHARE 23
80.40%
9.99%
1.25%
8.36%
1966
SHARE 26
46.60%
4.32%
1.08%
47.99%
1967
SHARE 29
80.19%
6.51%
1.11%
12.19%
1970
SHARE 34
89.23%
8.36%
1.79%
0.62%
1972
SHARE 38
88.74%
8.09%
2.16%
1.02%
Table 2: Percentages of Raw Total
These percentages are not, in themselves, useful: the gender of those attendees whose names
were reported with initials or who are counted as ‘ambiguous’ is obscured by those categories,
but presumably existed nonetheless. These SHARE data thus provide a statistical sample of
attendees whose names were unambiguously-gendered male or female, along with ‘noise’ in the
form of initials and ambiguously-gendered names. To provide a useful estimate of the gender
5
SHARE 11 Report, CBI 21 (SHARE, Inc. Records), Box 3, Folder 17.
SHARE 14, 17, 20 Reports, CBI 21 (SHARE, Inc. Records), Box 3.
7
SHARE 23, 26, 29 Reports, CBI 21 (SHARE, Inc. Records), Box 4.
8
SHARE 34 Report, Volume 1, CBI 21 (SHARE, Inc. Records), Box 5.
9
SHARE 38 Report, Volume 1, CBI 21 (SHARE, Inc. Records), Box 6.
6
26
breakdown of SHARE meetings, ‘ambiguous’ names and ‘initials’ are subtracted from the
meeting total, giving a total of ‘unambiguously-gendered’ names. The percentage of male and
female names in this total are given in Table 3, below:
Year:
Meeting Number:
Total Unambiguously-Gendered:
Male:
Female:
1958
SHARE 11
212 (75.18% of Raw Total)
90.57%
9.43%
1960
SHARE 14
328 (51.33% of Raw Total)
86.59%
13.41%
1961
SHARE 17
657 (76.22% of Raw Total)
84.63%
15.37%
1963
SHARE 20
767 (78.03% of Raw Total)
88.14%
11.86%
1964
SHARE 23
941 (90.39% of Raw Total)
88.95%
11.05%
1966
SHARE 26
660 (50.93% of Raw Total)
91.52%
8.48%
1967
SHARE 29
1252 (86.70% of Raw Total)
92.49%
7.51%
1970
SHARE 34
1903 (97.59% of Raw Total)
91.43%
8.57%
1972
SHARE 38
1616 (96.82% of Raw Total)
91.65%
8.35%
Table 3: Percentages of Unambiguously-Gendered Names
Due to the fluctuating number of initials given, the percentage of the meeting total counted in
this sample varies, from a low of about 50% to a high of almost 97%. However, the consistency
of the percentages from meeting to meeting in spite of this fluctuation supports the
representativeness of this sample.
It should be emphasized that these data are imperfect. While SHARE was a large meeting, there
is potential bias in the sample it provides. Attendees were selected to represent their participating
institution, which may have disproportionately favored male attendance. Women may also have
had more incentive to give initials than their male colleagues, in which case the exclusion of
initials from this sample would tend to underrepresent the number of women actually attending
SHARE meetings. Furthermore, SHARE meetings were not a perfectly representative sample of
American programmers, as IBM sales representatives and other non-programmers were among
the attendees. This may have introduced another bias toward male names, as IBM’s sales
workforce was predominantly male in the 1950s and 1960s. 10 However, all of these potential
biases are merely speculative, and cannot be established or corrected for with any degree of
confidence. Given the lack of quantitative workforce data for the 1950s and 1960s, this sample,
while admittedly imperfect, is nonetheless useful. It roughly shows that about 1-in-10 of SHARE
attendees were female between 1958 and 1972, suggesting that computing was a relatively maledominated field in this period, but that it included a non-negligible minority of women.
William F. Vogel
10
Former IBM programmer Ann Hardy reported being told in the late 1950s that “women [couldn’t] be in sales” but
could work as programmers; Ann Hardy, Untitled, in “Anecdotes,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25 no.
4 (2003), p. 81. According to IBM’s Think magazine, women were 5% of the company’s ‘professional’ workforce (a
category which presumably included sales personnel along with programmers and systems analysts) in 1966;
“Unfinished Business,” Think, July/August 1982, p. 23.
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Recent Publications
Aspray, William. “Information Society, Domains, and Culture.” [Think Piece] IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 2-4.
Bullynck, Maarten. “Computing Primes (1929-1949): Transformations in the Early Days of Digital
Computing.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:3 (July-Sept. 2015): 44-54.
Cardoso, Daniel Llach. Builders of the Vision: Software and the Imagination of Design (Routledge,
2015).
Clune, Michael W. Gamelife: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).
Cohn, Julie. “Transitions from Analog to Digital Computing in Electrical Power Systems.” IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing 37:3 (July-Sept. 2015): 32-43.
Con Diaz, Gerardo. “Embodied Software: Patents and the History of Software Development, 1946-1970.”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:3 (July-Sept. 2015): 8-19.
Copeland, Jack B., Carl J. Posy and Oron Shagrir. Computability: Turing, Gödel, Church, and Beyond
(MIT Press, 2015).
Cortada, James W. “‘Doing History’ in the Olden Days, 1970s-1990s.” [Anecdotes] IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 84-88.
Cortada, James W. “Studying History as it Unfolds, Part 1: Creating the History of Information
Technologies.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:3 (July-Sept. 2015): 20-31.
Dechow, Douglas R. and Daniele Struppa. Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson
(Springer, 2015).
DeNardis, Laura. “The Internet Design Tension between Surveillance and Security.” IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 72-83.
Denning, Peter J. and Jack B. Dennis. “Machines, Languages, and Computation at MIT.” [Anecdotes]
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:3 (July-Sept. 2015): 76-77.
Denning, Peter J. and Craig H. Martell. Great Principles of Computing (MIT Press, 2015).
Haigh, Thomas. “The Tears of Donald Knuth.” Communications of the ACM 58:1 (January 2015): 40-44.
Hammerman, Robin and Andrew Russell, eds. Ada’s Legacy: Cultures of Computing from the Victorian
to the Digital Age (Morgan & Claypool/ACM Books, 2015).
Holmes, Richard. “Computer Science: Enchantress of Abstraction.” Nature 525: 7567 (September 3,
2015): 30-32.
Hu, Tung-Hui. A Prehistory of the Cloud (MIT Press, 2015).
Greenberg, Joel. Gordon Welchman: Bletchley Park’s Architect of Ultra Intelligence (Frontline Books,
2014).
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Lipner, Steven B. “The Birth and Death of the Orange Book.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
37:2 (April-June 2015): 19-31.
Longo, Bernadette. Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals (Morgan
& Claypool/ACM Books, 2015).
Katz, Barry M. Make IT New: The History of Silicon Valley Design (MIT Press, 2015).
Meyer, Eric T. and Ralph Schroeder. Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and
Humanities (MIT Press, 2015).
Misa, Thomas J. “Computing is History.” Communications of the ACM 58:10 (October 2015): 35-37.
Nelson, Andrew J. The Sound of Innovation: Stanford and the Computer Music Revolution (MIT Press,
2015).
O’Donnell, Casey. Developer’s Dilemma: The Secret World of Videogame Creators (MIT Press, 2014).
Park, Dongoh. “Social Life of PKI: Sociotechnical Development of Korean Public-Key Infrastructure.”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 59-71.
Proenza, Francisco J. and Bruce Girard, eds. Public Access ICT Across Cultures: Diversifying
Participation in the Network Society (MIT Press, 2015).
Randell, Brian. “Reminiscences of Project Y and the ACS Project.” IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing 37:3 (July-Sept. 2015): 56-66.
Schafer, Valerie. Connecting Women: Women, Gender and ICT in Europe in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Century (Springer, 2015).
Sito, Tom. Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation (MIT Press, 2015).
Slayton, Rebecca. “Measuring Risk: Computer Security Metrics, Automation, and Learning.” IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 32-45.
Supnik, Bob. “The Story of SimH.” [Anecdotes] IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:3 (JulySept. 2015): 78-80.
Tedre, Matti. The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline (Chapman and Hall, 2014).
Warner, Michael. “Notes on the Evolution of Computer Security Policy in the U.S. Government, 19652003.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 8-18.
Witt, Stephen. How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient
Zero of Piracy (Viking, 2015).
Yost, Jeffrey R. “Computer Security.” [Guest Editor Introduction] IEEE Annals of the History of
Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 6-7.
Yost, Jeffrey R. “The Origin and Early History of the Computer Security Software Products Industry.”
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37:2 (April-June 2015): 46-58.
Compiled by Jeffrey R. Yost
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Featured Photo
“Lighting cigarette with mechanical hands”
This General Electric Company photograph, dated 13 November 1950, is one of several photographs of mechanical
hands performing “simple” tasks such as pouring a drink, signing a name, and tightening a nut on a bolt. Many
treasures to be found in our CBI Reference Files (CBI 24)!
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