CA PUBLICATIONo OF THE COMPUTERre HISTORY MUSEUM ⁄⁄ SPRINg–SUMMER 2007

REMARKABLE PEOPLE R E scuE d TREAsuREs A collection saved by SAP Focus on E x TRAORdinARy i MAGEs Computers through the Robert Noyce lens of Mark Richards PUBLISHER & Ed i t o r - i n - c hie f THE BEST WAY Karen M. Tucker E X E C U T I V E E D I t o R TO SEE THE FUTURE Leonard J. Shustek M A N A GI N G E D I t o R OF COMPUTING IS Robert S. Stetson A S S o c IA T E E D I t o R TO BROWSE ITS PAST. Kirsten Tashev

T E C H N I C A L E D I t o R Dag Spicer

E D I T O R Laurie Putnam

C O n t RIBU t o RS Leslie Berlin Chris Garcia Paula Jabloner Luanne Johnson Len Shustek Dag Spicer Kirsten Tashev

D E S IG N Kerry Conboy

p r o d u c t i o n ma n ager Robert S. Stetson

W E BSI T E M A N AGER Bob Sanguedolce

W E BSI T E D ESIG N The computer. In all of human history, rarely has one invention done Dana Chrisler so much to change the world in such a short time. Ton Luong The Computer History Museum is home to the world’s largest collection computerhistory.org/core of computing artifacts and offers a variety of exhibits, programs, and © 2007 Computer History Museum. All rights events. It’s where computing history lives. reserved. All artwork is copyright of the Computer History Museum unless otherwise credited. Printed Come visit us and see how far technology has come. in the USA.

EXHIBITS For reprints and permissions, contact: Innovation in the Valley (now – September 2009) [email protected]. Core subscriptions are a member benefit; for membership information, see Mastering the Game: A History of Computer Chess (now – September 2009) the inside back cover. Address changes and other Visible Storage: 600+ Artifacts from the Museum Collection (now – May 2009) written correspondence may be sent to: Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine(September 2007 – August 2008) Computer History Museum Attn: Core Editor Timeline of Computing History (opening October 2009) 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Visit these and other exhibits online at: computerhistory.org/exhibits Mountain View, CA 94043-1311, USA

On the cover: The eight founders of Fairchild Open to the public: Semiconductor in the company’s production area. Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday: 1–4 p.m. Back row, left to right: Victor Grinich, Gordon Saturday: 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Moore, Julius Blank, and Eugene Kleiner. Middle: Jean Hoerni. Front: Jay Last and C. Sheldon Roberts. Facing the group: Bob Noyce. Photo courtesy of 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special +1 650 810 1010 Collections. CA PUBLICATIONo OF THEre COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM ⁄⁄ SPRINg –SUMMER 2007

coLLEctI onS R EMARKABLE PEo P LE ABo U t t HE AUt H o RS 4 Rescued treasures: 18 “Go off and do something A curator’s personal account wonderful” LesLie BerLin is project historian for It was a curator’s dream: a Robert Noyce is best known as the Silicon Valley forgotten warehouse filled to the Archives at Stanford the cofounder of Fairchild Semi- University. Her first brim with computer artifacts, conductor and Intel. Four stories book, The Man from Depression-era punch card from the life of Bob Noyce offer Behind the Microchip: equipment to mainframes and Robert Noyce and glimpses into what made him one the Invention of minicomputers. CHM’s senior of the twentieth century’s most Silicon Valley curator tells the story of how he important inventors and (themanbehindthemicrochip.com), won the 2006 Book Award from the American and volunteer Alex Bochannek, entrepreneurs. _By Leslie Berlin Association for History and Computing. sponsored by SAP AG, rushed to Leslie holds a PhD in history from Stanford. Dortmund, Germany, to save this EXPLo RE tHE coLLEctI on Luanne Johnson, collection from destruction. 22 Slide-a-Mat Retailing System cochair of the _By dag Spicer prototype Computer History Museum Software 24 Man & Computer, 16-mm film Industry Special I n d U S t RY t ALES Interest Group, served 10 the It corporate Histories Project 25 IBM System/360 sales models as principal investigator for CHM’s Information Stories bring history to life. With 26 MacHack VI vs. Hubert dreyfus, Technology Corporate a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan paper tape Histories Project. Luanne has more than Foundation, the Museum reached 27 typed resignation letter from forty years of experience in the information out to those who worked at early J. Presper Eckert, Jr., to dr. Pender technology industry as a programmer, software information technology companies entrepreneur, and executive with industry- 28 Recent donations related nonprofit organizations. and collected their pioneering tales. _By Luanne Johnson Leonard J. shustek is chairman of the EXHIBIt S CHM Board of conV E RSAt I onS 29 the Babbage difference Engine Trustees and a partner 12 the oral History collection in the investment firm In the nineteenth century, Charles VenCraft. The retired What was it like to work at Apple Babbage set out to build an auto- cofounder of Network in the early 1980s? In this excerpt mated calculating machine. A five- General Corporation (now Network from the Museum’s Oral History ton, 8,000-part construction of Associates), Len is an occasional consulting Collection, Bill Atkinson and Andy Babbage’s Difference Engine will professor at Stanford University, where he earned an MS and a PhD in computer science. be on display at the Museum Hertzfeld, major contributors to He is also a trustee of Polytechnic University the creation of the Macintosh, beginning in the fall of 2007. in Brooklyn, New York, where he earned his share anecdotes from the early BS and MS in physics. dEPARt MEntS days of Apple. _By Len Shustek dag spicer is senior 2 In this issue curator of the Computer History EXt R A o R d I n A RY IMAGES 14 My first computer Museum, where he 15 Why take pictures of computers? 30 donor appreciation has been since 1996. 31 Passages A former electrical The vision of photographer Mark 32 cHM by the numbers engineer, Dag also Richards helps us look at computers holds advanced degrees 32 crossword puzzle in new ways—as representations of in the history of science and technology from the University of Toronto their inventors’ ideas and dreams and Stanford University. and lives.

COMPUTERHISTORY.ORg /CORE  in T his issuE

M ISSIon To preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and When I was a child, I hated history. It was boring, the teachers stories of the information age made me memorize irrelevant facts, and those facts bore no detect- V ISIon able relationship to my life. If “there is a history in all men’s lives,” To explore the computing revolution and its impact on the as Shakespeare’s Warwick tells King Henry IV, then what’s so human experience special about it? E XEc U t IVE dIREctoR & c E o John C. Toole The answer is that some history has impact. It changes lives. It inspires. It teaches. That is the history we must collect, and we B o ARd of L. curtis Widdoes, Jr. must find exciting ways to present it. t RUSt EES Mentor graphics Corporation Leonard J. Shustek VenCraft, LLC (President) Pierluigi Zappacosta This issue of Core has multiple examples of collecting and present- Sierra Science, Inc. david Anderson ing history that has impact. It starts with the remarkable story Sendmail of discovering a previously unknown treasure trove of the raw c. Gordon Bell B o ARd of material of history, in the form of hundreds of important artifacts Microsoft Corporation A d VISo RS hidden away in a warehouse in industrial Germany and destined Peggy Burke Sally M. Abel 1185 Design for the scrap heap. They were rescued, thanks to the generosity of Fenwick & West, LLP Lori crawford Gene Myron Amdahl SAP AG, in a mission worthy of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Infinity Capital William Aspray Andrea cunningham Indiana University CXO Communication Then on to another form of rescuing history: gathering the stories Paul Baran Mark dean of pioneers while they are still available to be told. The Sloan Robert Brodersen IBM Almaden Research University of California, Foundation–sponsored IT Corporate Histories Project used equal Center Berkeley donna dubinsky measures of web-based high technology and old-fashioned human Paul E. ceruzzi Numenta outreach to accumulate valuable materials for historians and Smithsonian Institution david Emerson Bill davidow researchers to use. Clarent Corporation Mohr, Davidow Ventures Edward feigenbaum federico faggin Stanford University The excerpts from our oral history of Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertz- Foveon Inc. Eric Hahn feld about their experiences at Apple give us insight into a remark- Samuel fuller Inventures group able company culture at a time when established companies were Analog Devices, Inc. dotty Hayes Burt Grad threatened by young upstarts. There is good advice here, too, from Intuit James Gray how programmers can be great to how everyone should live life. Gardner Hendrie Microsoft Corporation Sigma Partners Peter S. Hirshberg charles House Technorati We have many remarkable heroes in the computer industry. Here Stanford University Jeanette Horan Leslie Berlin presents anecdotes about Bob Noyce from her recent david House IBM Almaden Research Credence Systems biography. Leslie not only shows us various sides of the Intel Center christine Hughes cofounder’s personality, but also helps us find the lessons we can Burge Jamieson Achievement Plus learn from his successes and failures. Sigma Partners Peter Karpas Randy H. Katz Intuit University of California, Finally, we pause in the center section to appreciate the visual John Mashey Berkeley Consultant beauty of the computer and its component parts. There are many Harry W. Kellogg, Jr. teresa H. Meng Silicon Valley Bank ways that computers are used to create art, but photographer Mark Atheros Communications Steven t. Kirsch Richards shows us that, when looked at through the right lens, Isaac R. nassi Propel Software computers are art. SAP Corporation Suhas Patil tom Melcher Tufan We hope you enjoy this issue of Core and, as always, we welcome Greg Papadopoulos Bernard L. Peuto Sun Microsystems your comments. Concord Consulting david Patterson f. Grant Saviers University of California, Len Shustek Adaptec, Inc. (retired) Berkeley Chairman Larry Schoenberg John William Poduska, Sr. John f. Shoch Advanced Visual Systems Alloy Ventures James n. Porter Heidi Sinclair DISK/TREND, Inc. Burson-Marsteller, Europe Eric E. Schmidt Steve Smith google Arma Partners

Computer History Museum 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 USA +1 650 810 1010 main +1 650 810 1055 fax computerhistory.org

The museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, TID #77-0507525.  CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 A nnuAL FELLOW AWARds DINNER & CEREMONY

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007. This fall our 1185 Design Madison Tyler Technology event marks twenty years of celebrating Bill and Roberta Campbell Microsoft the stories of the information age. Cisco SanDisk Carol and Chris Espinosa San Jose Mercury News For more information, visit: Four Seasons Hotel SRI computerhistory.org/fellowawards Silicon Valley SwiftPartners Google Upright Marketing HP Sammy Yip Hunter Events LaST YEaR’S fELLOwS

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COMPUTERHISTORY.ORg /CORE  Rescued treasures: A curator’s personal account

 CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 n December 8, 2006, the CMA CGM T ra c e s of t h e pa s t Hugo, three football fields long and one This story begins in August 2006, when Siegfried M., a O computer programmer and consultant from Dortmund, of the world’s largest deep ocean container ships, Germany, notified the Museum about a collection of rare slipped into its berth at the sunny Port of Oakland. computing objects in a warehouse near him. (For privacy reasons, I use only the initial of Siegfried’s surname.) The Among its precious cargo of more than 8,200 warehouse was on the outskirts of Castrop-Rauxel, a small town in an industrial area once rich in coal. The town was forty-foot containers were six holding rare computer bombed with particular vigor by the Allies during World War artifacts from a warehouse in II as it also had large chemical and explosives complexes—a “double score” for Allied bombers. northwestern Germany on their History is always present in way to the Computer History Europe . . . and even during this mission, sixty or more years after the Museum in Mountain View, conflagration, traces of the past were their journey sponsored by all around us. software leader SAP AG. We determined that the Castrop- Rauxel warehouse was being used as These artifacts were rescued an informal storage area by Gustav T., who apparently had hoped to establish only weeks earlier by a “rapid- a German computer museum of his response team” composed of own. Gustav appeared to have acquired a collection of items belong- Museum volunteer (and native ing to a professor at the University of Aachen and combined German speaker) Alex Bochannek and me, the it with small computer collections from other sources. After some time, Gustav was faced with personal bankruptcy. As Museum’s senior curator. a creditor, it was now Siegfried’s intent to have a court- appointed administrator seize the collection and dispose of How did these rare objects make their multi- Gustav’s obligations to him through its sale. thousand-mile journey to the Museum and why? It was at this point that Siegfried contacted the Museum as a possible buyer. We were certainly interested! Being sensitive to issues of national pride, we ensured that other German museums had had a chance to look over the collection and potentially acquire items for themselves. This “ecosystem” approach is used by most museums to make optimum use of scarce resources. As long as something is preserved in a professionally managed and stable institution, CHM is agnostic about where items ultimately rest. Siegfried and volunteer Alex Bochannek spoke on the telephone at length about the collection coming to CHM. above | CHM’s Dag Spicer holding an IBM System/370 CPU sign. Siegfried agreed to travel to the warehouse that weekend and left | Phillips P 2934 dot matrix printer (ca. 1985) in situ in the take pictures of the collection in situ. German warehouse. That plants could grow vigorously shows the When we received the pictures, we were quite taken weak boundary between the inside and outside of the warehouse. aback by the size of the warehouse and the scope of its contents. The warehouse was being shared with a construc- tion equipment operator, and while it did have doors, they were left open all day and the warehouse contents were covered in dust . . . and, in places, bird droppings.

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E  right | Exterior view of the warehouse.

far right | Initial aerial view of the warehouse.

below | Map of western Germany. The warehouse was located in the village of Castrop-Rauxel.

It’s a good thing Alex and I did not understand the scope of the collection beforehand or we may have become discouraged.

A quick meeting ThE WAREh O usE was convened with The next morning, Alex and I were to briefly meet Siegfried CHM board chairman at the warehouse, which turned out to be a storage building Len Shustek, CEO John of the German national power company, RWE. We were very Toole, and vice presi- excited, not knowing in what condition to expect the building dent of operations or its contents. Once on site, we checked in with the locals David Dial to discuss next steps, if any. In a letter to the who brought us into the building. Acquisitions Committee of the Museum, I expressed my optimism at the opportunity: What met us was so overwhelming—so broad, so high, so deep—that Alex and I exchanged incredulous smiles, Alex and I believe this to be an opportunity of probably half out of fear, half out of joy. At the warehouse we enormous scale, diversity, and significance. The briefly met Siegfried, a personable man who spoke superb Museum has never had such an opportunity in its English (like most Germans today), and then returned to the over three-decade existence to fill existing gaps in hotel to prepare for the first working day of the visit. the collection, provide spares for possible restora- tions, obtain duplicate objects for loans or trades, Considerable preparation had been made in advance at and dramatically enhance the international scope the Museum in Mountain View to identify as many items as of its collection. possible from Siegfried’s initial photographs. Once on site in Germany, Alex and I worked to a 2m-by-2m grid system in We all agreed this collection had enormous potential and which the entire collection (more than 14,000 square feet in was at least worth a visit to assess it more closely. This was area) was divided. The contents of each 2m-by-2m square August 4. By noon on August 6, Alex and I were landing in were recorded in a notebook and included (where possible) Frankfurt—an airport of jaw-dropping scale—where we manufacturer, model, and any other relevant information. rented a car and then headed out onto the autobahn toward About 20 percent of the collection contained pallets of Dortmund. We arrived at our hotel in Castrop-Rauxel nearly documents and media (magnetic and otherwise) containing twenty-four hours after leaving Mountain View. historical software. Some of these documents were unique— site planning documents and sales “requests for proposals” from universities and businesses wishing to bring computers into their organizations. These are rare and offer a great deal of information about business processes and their automation at a time when many organizations were making their first foray into computing.

 CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 It’s a good thing Alex and I did not understand the scope of the collection beforehand or we may have become discouraged.

Most of the collection, however, was hardware—it took deal of support from CHM software curator Al Kossow, who Alex and me ten days to survey it—ranging from Depression- put his research skills to great effect, whether it was looking era mechanical punch card office machines to mainframes up obscure German data processing equipment or com- and minicomputers. menting on the desirability of obtaining particular software. While we worked away, after a few days Alex asked what Vice president of operations David Dial was also critical in the backhoe operator, who had been working just outside the navigating the intricacies of international freight forward- building near us since we arrived, was doing. He was, to my ing. Due to the span of computer history represented by the chagrin but Alex’s bemusement (bravado?), looking for collection, the thousands of individual objects, the distances, unexploded World War II ordnance. An unexploded 500-lb. and possible customs issues involved, this team approach was bomb had been located only a week before we arrived, about absolutely mandatory for success. 1,000 feet away from where we were working. As I noted, Alex and I displayed Marine-like discipline in not open- history in Europe is everywhere, and even here—more than ing boxes at random and exploring their contents—much as sixty years later near a warehouse in a small town—Allied we would have liked to! Sadly, on a project of this scale, one bombs were still being found. must make instant decisions or end up saving nothing. We On Day 5, representatives from the German moving did allow ourselves fifteen minutes of “unstructured playtime” company Hasenkamp visited us to discuss how to ship each day, which we spent opening random boxes as fast as whatever items we decided ought to be sent on to Mountain we could in hopes of finding some highly interesting object. View (later indicated by a yellow sticker as Alex and I walked We were usually not disappointed. A 1950s Anker-Werke around the collection one final time). When they arrived, they accounting machine (shown on page 8) and a 1960s AEG- had the same smile Alex and I had had on our first arrival: Telefunken computer system (pictured on page 9) were just Was it fear? Disbelief? Amazement? They were to return two objects from the rescue mission. twice more before we left. I think it’s a good thing Alex and I did not understand the scope of the collection beforehand or we may have become w H a t t o s a v e , w h a t to le a v e discouraged. Now, we not only had to arrange for shipping We now began the most difficult part of the adventure: decid- the items we wanted halfway across the world, we had to ing which items to save and which to leave behind. With a arrange for proper recycling of the electronic waste from the budget already stretched, we had the task of taking “only” items we did not retain (mostly common microcomputers). seven ocean containers’ worth of cargo. Alex and I had a great Europe has very strict recycling regulations but, thanks again to Alex, we were able to navigate the shipping and recycling

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E  Missions like this one are central to the Museum’s purpose of being home to the world’s largest and most important collection of computers and computing-related objects.

smoothly. Prior to final recycling, CHM also invited several had outstanding results—but have also left all involved with German computer clubs to look at the items we did not take a feeling of “Wow, that was close!” and to consider bringing them into their own collections. This incredible fragility of our world’s material traces— As Alex and I finished tagging all the items coming to hardware, software, the ideas behind them, the marketing Mountain View on Day 9, we were glad to be leaving the materials, the people involved who can (for a while) be respiratory problems, bird droppings, mold, rat poison, and interviewed for an oral history—makes the window for occasional dead bird behind. We left early the next morning preserving computing history especially narrow. While the for the return flight to San Francisco. delicate nature of artifact discovery and preservation is well When the Hugo finally pulled into the Port of Oakland, known to archaeologists (from whom all museum curators we were reminded of those days in the warehouse. Now we draw some of their DNA), computers present unique chal- begin the multiyear process of inventorying and creating lenges—first of which is a form of consciousness raising, so catalog records for each of the many thousands of objects in that old computers are not automatically considered to have the donation. CHM also moved ahead by a year its planned no value. purchase of off-site warehouse space to accommodate the Missions like this one are central to the Museum’s German donation. purpose of being home to the world’s largest and most important collection of computers and computing-related w O R k i ng a g a inst time objects. While some may say CHM was lucky, it has always Every day, year after year, the Computer History Museum been my view that luck is merely the intersection of prepara- works against time. Every year many thousands of tons of tion and opportunity. As this German adventure shows, computer equipment are disposed of in the world’s landfills— CHM remains prepared to preserve computer history at a a problem unforeseen in the utopian days of early computing. moment’s notice. Many of these items are rather uninteresting, mass-produced IBM-compatible machines of which the Museum has suf- I would like to dedicate this article to Alex Bochannek, who has ficient exemplars. volunteered at CHM for ten years and without whose generosity of But others are truly worthy of being saved. Although we spirit and language skills this acquisition simply could not have cannot know absolutely, it seems certain that extremely rare taken place. Alex is also a patient and fun travel companion. The (in some cases unique) items from computing’s early days are entire Museum also thanks software industry leader SAP AG of in this same waste stream. I say it “seems certain” because the Walldorf, Germany, which made an outstandingly big-hearted gift few rescue missions with which CHM has been involved have of $250,000 to CHM for the shipping and logistical support of this collection. Thank you both. _Dag Spicer

 CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 f a r l e f t | Anker-Werke AG accounting machine (ca. 1955). This transitional technology, between punch card and electronic accounting methods, was used by the German banking industry for decades.

l e f t | The “guano sorter” found in the warehouse. Wintering birds were responsible. Fortunately, this level of contamination was found only beneath warm warehouse lights, which were sparsely situated. For occupational health reasons, this item was not retained.

b e l o w l e f t | AEG-Telefunken TR 440 computer system (1969). This now rare German mainframe formed part of Germany's national industrial strategy to develop expertise in computer design systems.

Missions like this one are central to the Museum’s purpose of being home to the world’s largest and most important collection of computers and computing-related objects.

This collection brought to you by SAP

pportunities to obtain a large collection of museum artifacts O are rare, and the financial and preservation responsibilities that go with such initiatives are significant. A most generous gift of $250,000 from global software leader SAP AG helped to provide the required logistical support—as well as to cover shipping and storage costs—for the successful rescue of thousands of artifacts from more than 112 European and international manufacturers, including Tele- funken, Siemens, Zuse, Olivetti, and Groupe Bull.

Several of the artifacts will be used to populate the Computer His- tory Museum’s 14,000-square-foot “Timeline of Computing History” exhibit, to be launched in 2009, as well as other future physical and virtual exhibits. The new collection greatly enhances the Museum’s ability to undertake major exhibits, and will provide researchers access to unique technical information unavailable anywhere else.

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E  T h e I T c O R P O R A T E H i s tor i e s P ro j e c t

Steve Maysonave’s videotaped story describes the agreement between Digital Research, Inc., Collecting the stories and IBM for distribution of DRI’s CP/M operat- of companies that created ing system with the IBM PC. the information age By Luanne Johnson

ne summer Sunday in 1973, on David of the Computer History Museum, the Charles Babbage Foundation, and the Software History Center (subsequently Odel Rio’s first day of work at Software AG, acquired by the Computer History Museum) and funded by the phone rang. A client in Los Angeles was a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. having problems with a trial of Adabas, a data- Through an initiative to use the Internet to preserve the base management system developed in Germa- recent history of science and technology, the Sloan Foun- ny and distributed by David’s new employer. dation encourages people to record history by telling their personal stories about working on technology projects. The Within twenty-four hours, David was on IT Corporate Histories Collection focuses on stories told a plane from Virginia to Los Angeles with Dick by people who worked for companies that developed and McGann, an “experienced” Adabas program- marketed information technology in all its permutations. The mer who had been with the company two whole stories range from pithy anecdotes to in-depth descriptions of months. David’s promised four to six weeks of a company start-up or new product development. While most training were compressed into an eight-hour are memoirs written by the participants, the collection also flight to California, during which he frantically includes a number of videotaped interviews. reviewed documentation—all in German—and E x ploding m yths asked questions of Dick—usually, “What is this in English?” That night he fell asleep over the These stories provide great insights into the history of IT manuals, and the next morning he was on site companies. Sometimes they serve to explode long-stand- ing industry myths. For example, many in the IT industry assisting the client. have heard the story that Gary Kildall, the founder of Digital Research, Inc., blew off a meeting with “the suits” from IBM A collection o f stories regarding licensing the CP/M operating system to go gal- If this story brings a smile to your face, it’s probably because livanting in his private airplane. Supposedly the frustrated you, too, have a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, scramble-to- IBM folks turned to Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system deliver-the-goods story to tell. The information technology for their PC, and DRI missed out on the greatest opportunity industry was built by people who hustled to get the job done in the software industry. despite ever-changing requirements, impossible deadlines, Claims and counter-claims about this story have floated and slim lines of support all around. It was hectic; it was ex- about for years. But Curt Geske was there. In his story “DRI hilarating; it was crazy. You either loved it or you got out. and IBM—First Meeting,” Geske tells us the meeting was a The IT Corporate Histories Collection (computerhistory rather mundane affair between Dorothy Kildall, who ran the .org/corphist) is a repository for these stories and many more business end of things, and IBM lawyers over the wording of materials that preserve the history of information technology a nondisclosure agreement. IBM made it known that Micro- companies. The collection was developed by a partnership soft already had a contract to do the work and expected DRI

1 0 CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 A 1972 schematic of the Tymnet network. The Tymshare collection From the Informix collection: A 1990s marketing brochure also includes schematics from 1974, 1975, and 1977, illustrating the tells a fanciful tale of how Napoleon used the Informix On- dramatic growth of Tymnet. Line database management system to manage his logistics . and win the battle of Waterloo. to supply them with the full source code for CP/M, which R e a c hing o ut f or memories DRI was understandably reluctant to do. DRI and IBM did Because collecting personal stories was a key objective of the eventually reach an agreement for IBM to distribute CP/M, Sloan initiative, developing this collection required extensive but as recounted in Steve Maysonave’s videotaped story, the outreach to find people who worked for these companies. agreement was structured in a way that gave all the advantage The stories resulting from this effort are valuable historical to Microsoft. The outcome was consistent with the legend, source materials. Moreover, the outreach effort resulted in the but it hinged on the intricacies of contract negotiations rather collection of a large number of documents and other artifacts than on Gary’s preference for flying over attending meetings. related to these companies—more than 1,500 documents in the online collection plus hundreds more donated to the R e v e a l ing i nsights Museum archives. The vast majority of these materials came Other stories in the collection support long-held beliefs. In from the personal files of individuals, not from corporate files. the 1960s and 1970s, entrepreneurs had many war stories Because most of the companies covered by the project are about how IBM—the “evil empire” of the time—was out to defunct—long since acquired or otherwise out of business— crush them. This was a persistent legend that was difficult the materials collected from the basements and attics of the to authenticate because IBM never had an official objective participants represent historical information that was at risk to crush competition. But stories from those who were there of being lost forever. reveal how hard it could be to compete against a company More than 250 people have contributed everything that had such strong market dominance and controlled its from handwritten notes to organization charts to marketing customer accounts so effectively. brochures to network schematics—the whole hodgepodge of In “Day One at SAGNA,” Michael Jakes recounts how a materials that employees of these companies saved for what- client refused to allow him to make copies of a report from a ever reasons were important to them at the time. The Cincom database selection committee that chose Software AG’s Ada- collection includes marketing materials from the late 1960s bas over IBM’s product. The client was so fearful of reprisals that explain to potential customers what a database is and why from IBM if the results of an analysis unfavorable to IBM you need one. Compare that to the Informix marketing bro- leaked out that he allowed Michael, hidden in a conference chure from the mid-1990s, which tells a fanciful tale of how room, only an hour to make as many handwritten notes as Napoleon used the Informix OnLine DBMS to win the battle he could. of Waterloo. In the intervening decades, database marketing materials had shifted from explanations of what the product In another story, “MRX 1270 Terminal Control Unit,” was to attention-getting tactics. Robert DiMenna describes how IBM engineers provided incomplete interface specifications for their System 360/370 The materials collected are critical to documenting the computers, and how the IBM salesmen exaggerated the risks history of the industry that began to transform the world of attaching non-IBM equipment to their computers, thereby in the last half of the twentieth century. Thanks to the IT retarding sales of the Memorex 1270. Clearly the competitive Corporate Histories Collection, they are being preserved to obstacles were real, whether they were the result of official enlighten and inspire many generations to come. IBM policies or simply the fallout of IBM’s very focused mar- keting strategy.

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E   cOnVERsATiOns from the ORAL hisTORy cOLLEcTiOn By Len Shustek

For many years the Computer History Museum has had an active I came to Apple in 1978. I was hired as program to gather videotaped histories from people who have done the application software department, pioneering work in this first century of the information age. These because there wasn’t one. Actually, at the time I was a little better at pushing recordings are a rich aggregation of stories that are preserved in the chips than software, but that’s what collection, transcribed, and made available on the web to researchers, they needed. So, okay, I can do that. students, and anyone curious about how invention happens. There is a famous legend that the The oral histories the Museum collects are conversations about people’s Apple team visited xerox PARc (Palo lives. We want to know about their upbringing, their families, their Alto Research center) and carried away education, and their jobs. But above all, we want to know how they the user-interface ideas. What really came to the passion and creativity that leads to innovation. happened? A T k INSo N : In 1979, when the Lisa Here, as an example, are excerpts from an interview conducted by team went to visit, we got to see the Alto Grady Booch on June 8, 2004, of Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, and the Smalltalk System and I think who were major contributors to the creation of the Apple Macintosh.1 the Bravo text editor. What people misunderstand is that we didn’t just copy what we saw. It gave us great inspiration and gave us great confidence The early 1980s were the that, yes, we did want to do windowing, Gold Rush days for the but then we had to go incrementally, personal computer. We evolutionary-wise, and develop this user want to learn about the interface a piece at a time by a lot of atmosphere of the time. trial and error and a lot of stupid There was, everyone mistakes. says, something different about Apple. What really helped us was user testing. Larry Tesler was big on this. We H ERTz FEl D : The first wanted a beginning person to walk up computer I owned was an and be able to figure it out. We’d give Apple II, serial number them tasks and say, “Here, edit this 1708, which I bought in document and save it,” and asked them January 1978. I wanted to mutter a stream of consciousness. my own computer and What are they thinking about? That checked out the Altairs was very important because why they do and the IMSAIs, but I something is just as important as what wasn’t handy enough Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. they do. Thousands of these kinds of with a soldering iron. When the Apple tests where you find that people made II happened, I knew it was for me. I was mistakes are what led us to the user a grad student at UC Berkeley, but it 1. Oral histories are not scripted, and a transcript of casual interface. speech is very different from what one would write. I have taken quickly just took over my life. the liberty of editing and reordering freely for presentation. For the original transcript, see: archive.computerhistory.org/ I wasn’t an Apple employee then. I The Mac project was run very search/oh. was one of those people who were led differently from—and almost in to Apple like a moth to the flame; the competition with—the Lisa that had Apple II attracted me to Apple. I started been started years earlier. at Apple in August of ’79. H ERTz FEl D : The Mac design did A T k INSo N : The thing that drew me to not flow out of the Lisa hardware. It Apple was this notion that you can do was more like the Apple II, where you something with your life. Making a dent had a crazy genius coming up with in the world is what Steve Jobs used very unorthodox techniques not used to call it. You can have an impact for anywhere else. Burrell Smith, who the positive if you are where things are designed the Macintosh digital board, being created. really learned from Woz. The Apple II

 CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 apple’s Lisa II and Macintosh.

kind of hard to know exactly what they wanted. When the Mac was designed, I think we had a pretty clear picture of a fourteen-year-old boy using this thing, and we knew what they were like.

Every company has a unique culture for writing software. What was the Mac culture?

H ERTz FEl D : Freewheeling. Bill was really the center of coming up with the user interface, but he worked at home so he would come in maybe two or three times a week, usually when he had was the immediate predecessor of the brought it back home. It combined the discovered something new. We would Macintosh hardware, not the Lisa. Apple II spirit and a thriving third- all gather around and talk about it and give him feedback. Lisa had seven different applications all party community. And Burrell and developed by Apple, which was another Woz are similar-type designers: the A T k INSo N : I’d get good suggestions way the Lisa team diverged from the crazy genius instead of the conservative from other people and say, “Oh, that’s Apple II. One of the characteristics of committee. a good idea.” the Apple II was the third-party market. A T k INSo N : The goals of the two were H ERTz FEl D : It was very loose. In With Lisa the idea was that all the very different. We were designing the the Lisa group there were a lot more applications would be written by Apple. Lisa for an office worker, and since we philosophical arguments about what But you get a different spirit. The Mac weren’t office workers ourselves, it was is the best way to do it in the abstract. With the Mac, it was much more, “Try it out and see how it feels,” every step of the way.

PROfILE Of aN INvOLvED BOaRD MEMBER

gardner Hendrie Amazing as it sounds, this is only a small gardner is a computer pioneer himself. part of gardner’s contributions to the He was the designer of several early The founder Museum. gardner has been a trustee for minicomputers and was one of the and chair more than twenty years, starting back founders of Stratus Computer Inc. Since of the Oral when CHM was The Computer Museum 1985 he has been with Sigma Partners, History in Boston. He is on the Executive and a venture capital firm, and has served Committee at Finance Committees, for which he flies on many of their portfolio companies’ the Museum out from Boston every month. He is boards. is gardner chairman of both the Exhibits and Hendrie, who For the last ten years gardner has been Investment Committees and has tackled that project like everything he my mentor and role model for energetic recently reinvigorated the Major gifts does: comprehensively and in depth. He involvement. One of the great pleasures committee. He personally gives at the bought multiple sets of equipment, in being chairman of the Museum is the highest level each year to the Annual funded the necessary staff position, took opportunity it provides to work with Campaign and has made a multimillion- a course in how to do oral histories, and gardner, and I thank him profoundly for dollar contribution to the Museum for the last five years has been either that. _Len Shustek Campaign. He funds special projects videographer or interviewer (or both!) whenever he sees the need. for at least a third of the more than 120 oral histories the Museum has done in locations all over the country. Photo courtesy of Louis Fabian Bachrach.

COMPUTERHISTORY.ORg /CORE  But creating software is about more just as famous as the Apple visit to H ERTz FEl D : Pick things to work on than writing programs that work. xerox was Bill Gates’s visit to Apple. that you really, really want to use did Bill get it? yourself. You can close the loop with A T k INSo N : It’s an art form. It’s not the user testing, but if you are one of the just practical: “Does it do the job?” But H ERTz FEl D : Well, he didn’t get every is it clean inside? I would spend time detail, but definitely when he saw the users, you can just iterate in your head. rewriting whole sections of code just Mac and the graphical user interface, he Of all the things you can work on, work to make them more cleanly organized, believed in it. He put a lot of resources on the thing that isn’t in the world that more clear. I’m a firm believer that the on it, and Microsoft was really helpful you want to make be in the world. Then best way to prevent bugs is to make in tweaking some of our rough edges. you can be both user and creator. There it so that you can read the code and For a while they had almost as many is real power in that. To some extent, understand exactly what it’s doing. people on the Mac as Apple did. that’s the secret of the Mac’s success. That was a little bit counter to what We all wanted the Mac more than I ran into when I first came to Apple. We always end by asking for advice for anyone else. So much so, that we had There were a lot of people who prided the next generation of innovators, in to make it. themselves on how this little piece of this case for software developers. Follow your heart. You have to do work code does something magic. I found A T k INSo N : If you want to get it each day that you believe in. that if I spent time going over the code, smooth, you’ve got to rewrite it from cleaning it up, making it sometimes scratch at least five times. Do a lot of tighter, but also making it so that it was user testing, because you can’t see the And that, my friends, is advice straightforward for another person to things that you can’t see. Don’t try to that applies to more than just follow in my footsteps, then I would feel ship that first prototype; hold off, and writing software. proud of it. let it incubate in privacy. Don’t tell the marketing people you’re done when you’ve got the first fifth of it done! The thing that makes software smooth and useable is user testing, user testing, and user testing.

My F i R s T cOMPu TER(s)

My first desktop computer (1982) was put together by San Francisco engineer and philanthropist Henry Dakin, who has helped many people in the nonprofit sector become computer functional. It consisted of a custom DOS-based computer, two eight-inch Shugart floppy drives, a big black- and-white CRT, and a dot-matrix printer. My first husband was an editor at the San Jose Mercury News, and the Merc outfitted its staff with TRS-80 laptops to cover the 1984 Democratic National Conven- tion in San Francisco. I looked at his TRS-80 and said, “That’s neat!” And got one for myself.

Dr. Gloria C. Duffy President and CEO The Commonwealth Club of California

 CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 why take pictures of computers?

Cray- “brick” module. Cray Computer Corporation, 99. Photo © Mark Richards.

Imagine we could be around during the time Mark Richards has of the first printing press. What would you photographed diverse want to keep for civilization to see in the human subjects, from combat in Afghanistan for future? This is one of the questions I asked Time to street gangs in myself as I photographed these computers. I Los Angeles for Newsweek. set out to document what I saw as the visual A California native, Mark elements of the beginning of a new era, the has covered Silicon Valley age of the computer, a time as significant as since the early 1990s. the age of the early printing press. His images have earned numerous awards from I wanted my photography to express the kind of passion that men Communications Arts and women felt when they were inventing these machines. More magazine, and his work has than just taking pictures, I wanted both the layperson and the appeared in publications such as the New York Times Sunday Magazine, computer professional to feel what I felt. To see these machines as Fortune, Smithsonian, Life, and BusinessWeek. more than steel and wire and plastic. To see that these are ideas These pictures are from Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage and dreams and lives. Computers (Chronicle Books, 2007), which features Mark’s photographs of As a still photographer I can use only two dimensions, color, form, machines from the collection of the Computer History Museum with text context, and a few other tricks. I must use them with my enthusi- by John Alderman. Core Memory presents “a guided tour through some of the most notable and curious devices in the history of computing.” The asm and my imagination, while staying true to the machines. My book is available in the Museum gift shop or by contacting Jim Somers hope is that my photographs will allow people to see these machines at [email protected]. The price for Museum members is $30, in a new way. _Mark Richards including tax. The book’s list price is $35.

COMPUTERHISTORY.ORg /CORE  t h i s pa g e | Univac I mercury delay line memory tank. o p p o s i t e pa g e , t o p | Close-up of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Remington Rand, 1951. Integrator and Computer) Function Table. U.S. Army, 1946.

o p p o s i t e pa g e , b o t t o m | CDC 6600. Control Data Corporation, 1964.

All photos © Mark Richards.

  CORE  S  P R CORE I N G – SUMMER S P R I N G – 2007SUMMER 2007 COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E 1 7 “Go off and do something wonderful” fOUR STORIES fROM THE LIf E O f ROBERT NOYCE // BY LESLIE BERLIN

Bob noyce (left) and his older brother Gaylord proudly display the glider they built in the summer of 1945.

Image courtesy of Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections.

 8 CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 obert Noyce was called the Thomas He was only aloft for a few seconds, but he landed without REdison and the Henry Ford of Silicon crushing the machine and declared the experiment a success. Valley: Edison for his coinvention of the t a k e - a w a y . Noyce, at age twelve, already possessed three attributes that would define his future success as a tech- integrated circuit, a device that lies at the nical entrepreneur. First, his technical ability with his hands is heart of modern electronics; Ford for his evident. Throughout his life, Noyce was respected by engi- work as a cofounder of two companies— neers as well as scientists because he was not simply a thinker; he was also a builder. Second, the adolescent Noyce pulled Fairchild Semiconductor, the first success- together a diverse team, each member of which he tapped for ful silicon firm in Silicon Valley, and Intel, his or her ability to contribute something unique to the project. today the largest semiconductor company Finally, in the boy who reached the edge of the roof and kept on running, we see the soul of the man who lived without lim- in the world. Noyce also mentored dozens its, a man who believed that every idea could be taken further. of entrepreneurs, an effort he loved and These three attributes—technical credibility, the ability to as- called “restocking the stream I fished from.” semble and motivate a diverse team, and a “no limits” mindset when it came to goal-setting—underpinned Noyce’s technical and business success. Right up until his death in 1990 at the age of sixty-two, Noyce was a S c ientist t o m a n a ger daredevil. His jacket bore a patch that For Bobby Noyce, In September 1957, Noyce, then thirty read, “No guts, no glory.” It was a fit- years old, joined a rebellion led by ting motto for a man who flew his own the real test of seven of his coworkers. Julius Blank, jets and took time off every year to go Vic Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene helicopter skiing. It is no wonder, then, success would be Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, and that for many his life encapsulated the if he could, as he put Sheldon Roberts had met more than high-flying, high-risk, high-reward a year earlier when they were hired by world of high technology. it, “jump off the roof William Shockley, coinventor of the It is impossible to do justice to transistor, to work at his new company Noyce in a brief article. Instead, I offer of a barn and live.” in Mountain View. four stories that provide glimpses into In short order, Shockley proved what made him one of the twentieth an unpredictable micromanager. Even century’s most important inventors and entrepreneurs. And in worse, he wrenched the company’s focus away from silicon the spirit of Noyce’s belief that the best knowledge is knowledge transistors, the broad market for which was apparent even at that can be used, each story includes a “take-away” for readers. that time, to four-layer diodes that were difficult to build and served a limited market. The group of seven, soon joined by B o yhood a d v enturer Noyce, decided to leave. When Noyce was twelve, he and his fourteen-year-old brother It was not easy to find someone willing to fund a start-up Gaylord decided to build a boy-sized glider. They used no company managed by young technologists in 1957, but with blueprints, only the knowledge they had gained from years of the help of two New York bankers (one of whom was Arthur constructing model airplanes. Rock), the group did so. Fairchild Camera and Instrument Building the glider was the highlight of the summer of agreed to back the fledgling operation, Fairchild Semiconduc- 1940 for many of the seventeen children Bobby Noyce con- tor, and soon acquired it outright. vinced to help in the effort. A boy whose father’s furniture store Noyce headed research and development at Fairchild received rugs on long bamboo spindles donated the rods for the Semiconductor. He adopted a hands-off management style glider’s frame. A girl sewed the cheesecloth that stretched over that encouraged outside-the-box thinking, creative freedom, the wings. And the boy with the newly minted driver’s license and collaboration. He was an excellent supervisor of technical was charged with hitching the glider to the back of his father’s work. car to see if the plane could be flown like a kite. In January 1959, Noyce became general manager of But for Bobby Noyce, the real test of success would be if Fairchild Semiconductor. A PhD physicist with no formal he could, as he put it, “jump off the roof of a barn and live.” business training, Noyce taught himself business skills over That’s what he resolved to do. He climbed up on top of the next eight years. Within a decade of the company’s found- the barn near his house, had someone hand him the glider, ing, Fairchild Semiconductor had 11,000 employees and $12 took a deep breath, and then ran right off the edge of that roof million in profits. For a while, its parent company (essentially into the unknown. all of whose profit came from the semiconductor division) was the best-performing stock on Wall Street.

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E 1 9 the eight founders of fairchild Semiconductor in the company’s production area. back row, left to right: Victor Grinich, Gordon Moore, Julius Blank, and Eugene Kleiner. middle: Jean Hoerni. front: Jay Last and c. Sheldon Roberts. At left, several key illustrations from facing the group: Bob noyce. noyce’s integrated circuit patent.

Then everything fell apart. Fairchild Noyce’s experiences at Fairchild forced began missing scheduled deliveries. Prod- him to recognize his own shortcomings. ucts in the development stage could not be “One thing I learned at Fairchild,” he later successfully transferred to manufacturing. admitted, “is that I don’t run large organi- The trickle of employees leaving Fairchild zations well. I don’t have the discipline to in recent years became a flood. In the third do that, have the follow through.” quarter of 1967, profits were 95.5 percent When Noyce and his Fairchild cofound- lower than a year before. er Gordon Moore left the company in July of Fairchild Semiconductor declined for 1968 to start a small memory operation that many reasons, but Noyce himself must today is called Intel, they deliberately split bear some responsibility. His laissez-faire power evenly between them. This decision, management approach—offering general which came directly from Noyce’s having directives rather than following up on spe- confronted his own managerial limitations cific process details—was ideal for inspir- at Fairchild, offers yet another take-away: ing and supervising highly creative technical work, but this Noyce was willing to act on the knowledge of his own profes- management style did not translate well to large, multifaceted sional limits. organizations. I N v E NTOR take- away. Inspirational leadership alone is not effec- tive management. At times, the same person can be both an Of the seven patents Noyce filed in his first eighteen months excellent big-picture, rally-the-troops leader and an outstand- at Fairchild, the best known is #2,981,877 for “Semiconduc- ing detail-oriented manager, but this was not the case with tor Device-and-Lead Structure.” Fairchild called the product Noyce, who was the former but not the latter. developed on the basis of this patent—a complete electronic circuit built on a chip of silicon small enough to be carried off by an ant—a “monolithic integrated circuit.” Nearly every electronic device today contains descendants of the integrated circuit in Noyce’s patent application.

 0 CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 By the time Noyce’s patent application was submitted, however, Noyce himself had left the lab—and research below | Bob Noyce and Steve Jobs in the mid-1980s. science—for good. As general manager of Fairchild Semicon- Jobs is one of many entrepreneurs who count Noyce ductor, his primary contribution to integrated circuit develop- among their major influences. ment came through his funding relevant research and encour- aging gifted researchers. It was not Noyce but a team led by his cofounder Jay Last and anchored by men such as Isy Haas, Bob Norman, Lionel Kattner, and Jim Nall that transitioned Noyce’s notebook entry from good idea to real product. And in truth, Noyce’s patent did not provide much guidance. It said that it ought to be possible to build integrated circuits using isolation techniques as well as the breakthrough planar process invented by Noyce’s Fairchild cofounder Jean Hoerni. The patent did not, however, say how to make this possibility a reality. That was what Last’s group figured out through their own remarkably innovative work, some of which earned team members patents on their own key ideas and processes.

t a k e - a w a y . Innovation is rarely the product of a single mind. Invention is best understood as a team effort, with the person ultimately called “inventor” occupying much the same space as the pitcher who has just had a perfect game. The outfielders might have caught a dozen fly balls, the first base- man might have nearly broken his neck to step on the bag an instant before the runner, the catcher might have called for pitches perfectly calibrated to each batter’s weakness, but the record books note only that the pitcher threw a perfect game. Noyce never hesitated to admit that his ideas about integrated circuits relied heavily on ideas that were “in the air” in 1958 and 1959. Without Hoerni, without Moore, without For his part, Jobs believed that “you cannot understand the work of Kurt Lehovec at Sprague, Noyce never would have what is happening today without understanding what came imagined the integrated circuit in the way he did. Without before,” and Noyce gave him a way to experience what Jobs Last, the microcircuits group at Fairchild, called “that second wonderful era of the and other people around the world valley, the semiconductor companies working in the field, Noyce’s ideas would leading into the computer.” never have become marketable products. “Optimism t a k e - a w a y . There is an informal sort of generational succession in Silicon M e ntor Valley that places Noyce near the top After Noyce retired as Intel board chair in is an essential of the family tree. A few years ago, for 1979—he remained a board member until example, the founders of Google asked his death—he enjoyed mentoring young ingredient for Steve Jobs for advice and mentorship in entrepreneurs. Noyce worked with dozens the same way Jobs had come to Noyce of youthful technologists and funded innovation.” when Apple was young. many small companies. The best known Noyce believed that would-be entre- of the entrepreneurs he encouraged was preneurs needed successful role models Steve Jobs, cofounder and CEO of Apple and cofounder of (though he never would have put it that way). His financial Pixar, Inc. success directly benefited the entrepreneurs whose companies The two met in 1977, when Apple was a year old. Noyce’s he funded as an informal angel investor, but the stories about wife, Ann Bowers, headed human resources at Apple, and his success indirectly inspired many more who thought, “If through her, Jobs deliberately sought out Noyce as a mentor. he can do it, I can, too.” This belief is an essential aspect of “Steve would regularly appear at our house on his motorcycle,” any innovative culture because it encourages new ideas and Bowers recalls. “Soon he and Bob were disappearing into the risk-taking—and with it engenders a self-perpetuating cycle basement, talking about projects.” of entrepreneurship. “Optimism is an essential ingredient for Noyce answered Jobs’s phone calls—which invariably innovation,” Noyce—who often advised people to “go off and began with, “I’ve been thinking about what you said” or “I do something wonderful”—once said. “How else can the indi- have an idea”—even when they came at midnight. At some vidual welcome change over security, adventure over staying point he confided to Bowers, “If he calls late again, I’m going in a safe place?” to kill him” . . . but still he answered the phone. “He was very interested in—fascinated by—the personal computer, and we talked a lot about that,” Jobs recalls of Noyce. All images courtesy of Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections.

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E   Explore the collection A sampling of objects from across the Museum’s five collections

Slide-a-Mat Retailing System prototype | CHM#: X3598.2006 Date: 1965 | Collection: Objects | Source: Gift of Brian Kelly Carolan

This 1965 prototype is early evidence of a The Slide-a-Mat consisted of a custom desk novel concept in retailing that looks very with two rear-projection screens (with slide familiar from our 2007 perspective. Want projectors inside), one of which showed a to bring your merchandise to potential product or service and the other of which ready-to-buy customers? Allow customers showed additional information such as to compare products and services among specifications. If customers wanted to buy, vendors? Save them time? Allow them to they pushed one of the buttons running shop from an armchair? Eliminate traffic along the edge of the desk to specify the congestion? These are not web-based ideas. product, color, size, and other features. They are just some of the advantages the Slide-a-Mat Retailing System offered— thirty years before the World Wide Web.

  CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 left | Shoppers demonstrating the Slide-a-Mat.

bot tom left and this page | Slide-a-Mat concept drawings and promotional materials.

To enable customers to place orders, the Slide-a-Mat included a telephone with an optical sense card reader and a set of cards. When ready, the customer slid a vendor- specific plastic card into the telephone, which then dialed the vendor and connected the customer to a salesperson.

The Slide-a-Mat was patented, but internal problems led the company to go under. This prototype is the only physical trace of the system in existence. _Dag Spicer

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E   Man & Computer, 16-mm film | CHM#: X3604.2006 Date: 1965 | Collection: Media | Source: Gift of Howard Chang

Screenshots from Man & Computer.

Starting in the 1940s, IBM became a The film Man & Computer, made by IBM’s UK a number of different techniques, including major producer of films used for training, branch in 1965, provides a basic understanding animations, and features a few brief scenes of documenting business processes, entertaining of computer operations. A large portion of the an IBM System/360 in use—just months after at company functions, and educating the film shows the ways in which a computer can the first machines were delivered. public. Several IBM films were made by be simulated by five people using the standard _Chris Garcia respected filmmakers and sometimes featured office equipment of the day. The film employs well-known actors such as Bob Newhart.

  CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 IBM System/360 sales models | CHM#: X3749.2007 Date: 1965 | Collection: Ephemera | Source: Gift of Al Burstiner

On April 7, 1964, IBM made the most more than three decades and can still dramatic announcement in computer be seen in various IBM mainframes. IBM history. After investing nearly $5 billion sold more than $100 billion worth of in research and development, IBM had System/360 installations over the life created a family of computer models of the family—a remarkable milestone, that spanned a 40:1 performance even by today’s standards. range—and could all run the same software. This family of machines was These sales models were used in two known as the “System/360,” an allusion ways: first, as part of the presentation to the system covering all points of made by an IBM salesperson to the customer compass, from a small potential customers; second, as a tool business doing payroll to a university for planning computer installation and undertaking scientific research to layout of the room where the computer government agencies processing would eventually reside. _Dag Spicer millions of checks per month.

Even though it was already the market leader in punch card equipment and top | IBM System/360 sales models, 1965. “electronic data processing machines,” this was a remarkable gamble by IBM. below | IBM System/360 installation, 1965. Image courtesy of IBM Archives. After supporting seven mutually incompatible computer lines for years, IBM developed the System/360 as a means of simplifying their computer offerings for salespeople and customers alike. The System/360 was supremely successful. Its architecture dominated the mainframe computer industry for

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E   MacHack VI vs. Hubert Dreyfus, paper tape | CHM#: X3278.2006 Date: 1967 | Collection: Software | Source: Gift of Bruce Buchanan

Hubert Dreyfus, a professor of philosophy at MIT in the 1960s, found that many of his students thought artificial intelligence (AI) was an already accomplished fact. This misplaced faith helped shape Dreyfus into an early critic of AI’s claims, and in 1965 he was hired by the think tank the RAND Corporation to explore the issue. The result was a ninety-page paper questioning the computer’s ability to serve as a model for the human brain and asserting, for example, that no computer program could defeat even a ten-year-old child at chess.

Two years later Richard Greenblatt, formerly an undergraduate at MIT, wrote a chess program using only 16K of memory for the DEC PDP-6 computer. The program, MacHack VI, played chess at a level far above its predecessors, a factor that would surprise Dreyfus (and the AI community) when demonstrated.

With some confidence, students at MIT challenged Can the machine, the robot, the computer replace man? Dreyfus to play a game against MacHack VI. Dreyfus lost and the game became a milestone moment in Can man’s behavior be formalized, his brain and body AI—at least for AI proponents. bypassed, to arrive at the essence of rationality? Is artificial intelligence possible? _Hubert Dreyfus, 1972 In fairness to Dreyfus, 1960s computers were primitive ancestors of today’s machines, so to claim computers could think does indeed seem grandiose, even from today’s perspective. After fifty years of above left | Original paper tape from the chess match. research, one of the key conclusions of AI is that, for machines, simple things (e.g., tying a shoe) are above right | Cover of Dreyfus’s 1972 book, What Computers Can’t Do, difficult and difficult things (e.g., playing chess) are based on his RAND Corporation report of 1967. simple. _Kirsten Tashev

  CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 Typed resignation letter from J. Presper Eckert, Jr., to Dr. Pender | CHM#: X3278.2006 Date: March 25, 1946 | Collection: Documents | Source: Purchase of CHM

The transition of an invention from the laboratory to the marketplace, often difficult, is a process nearly every technology-based company must go through at some stage. In 1946, Presper (“Pres”) Eckert and John Mauchly, inventors of the ENIAC computer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering, wanted to form their own company but were constrained by their agreement with the university over patent rights to the EDVAC, ENIAC’s successor.

In his resignation letter, Eckert writes: I have felt that the patent rights which have been assured me in connection with my work up to this time were an important part of my remuneration…it seems sensible at this time to resign, since…our commercial ideas for computing machines are incompatible with the Moore School’s development program.

Eckert and Mauchly founded the Electronic Control Company (ECC), which became the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in 1947. With the death of their main financial backer only two years later, Eckert and Mauchly sold their business to the Remington Rand Corporation. For this they received $200,000 and a guarantee of eight years of employment. Their first commercial computer, the UNIVAC I, was delivered to the United States Census Bureau on March 31, 1951.

Although their own business failed, leaving an opening for Remington Rand, Eckert and Mauchly remained pioneers in the development of large-scale electronic computing systems. _Paula Jabloner

right | Typed resignation letter from J. Presper Eckert, Jr., to the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Pender, March 25, 1946.

COMPUTERHISTORY.OR G / C O R E 2 7 re c e n t D O N AT I O n s Objects selected for their rarity, importance, or whimsy

Robots Date: 1970s–1980s Telebit modem prototype Collection: Objects Date: 1980 Source: Gift of Collection: Objects Monroe H. Postman Source: Gift of Eric Smith CHM#: X3806.2007 CHM#: X3570.2006 By the mid-1970s, the microprocessor Prototypes fulfill an important part of the was inexpensive enough to place into Museum’s mission to explore the deeper toy and educational robots, which soon forces underlying technological innovation. proliferated as often-whimsical links between the fearful imaginings of Often a prototype can show the genesis of ITR time clock Shelley’s Frankenstein and more sedate an important idea or a “road not taken” Date: 1916 before the object stabilized and came to versions of robots as helpers. Often these Collection: Objects robots simply integrated technologies into market. This modem prototype represents Source: Gift of Len Shustek the beginning of the company Telebit, which an android shell: many had cassette or CHM#: X3854.2007 offered modems based on a new approach eight-track tape players as well as home International Time Recording Company to data transmission over noisy lines. Telebit console video games built into them. (ITR) was founded in Endicott, New was founded by Paul Baran, a CHM Fellow York, in 1889. It sold time clocks based (2005), and was later acquired by Cisco. on the 1888 patents of Willard Bundy. According to an original sticker located inside this particular unit, the time clock was shipped to R. Wallace & Sons Manufacturing Company of Wallingford, Connecticut, in 1916.

Punch card Christmas wreath Date: 1962 Collection: Ephemera Source: Gift of Camille Bounds CHM#: X3612.2007 Among the rarest things in the Museum’s collection are “unofficial” objects created by computer users. Temple of Apshai, This wreath, for example, was made Automated Simulations, Inc. over the Christmas holidays in 1962 Date: 1981 using IBM punch cards. Its maker, a Collection: Software CalTech student, sold such wreaths to Source: Gift of Phil Root put himself through school. Due to its age CHM#: X3671.2007 and fragility, this wreath may be the only Temple of Apshai was a computer role- one of its kind. playing game released for many platforms, including the IBM PC (the PC version is shown here). The game was inspired by role-playing board games of the 1970s such as Dungeons & Dragons. Temple of Apshai was followed by two sequels: Gateway to Apshai and Hellfire Warrior.

2 8 CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 THE VICTORIAN COMPUTER: C H ARLES B ABBAGE’ S DIFFERENCE ENGINE

n 1821, inventor and mathematician The BaBBage engine London completed the first full-sized I Charles Babbage was poring over weighs five Tons and Babbage Difference Engine. Over the a set of mathematical tables. Finding consisTs of 8,000 parTs. past three years a duplicate engine, error after error, Babbage exclaimed, iT is an arresTing along with a printing apparatus, was “I wish to God these calculations specTacle built. The Babbage engine weighs five had been executed by steam.” His in operaTion. tons and consists of 8,000 parts. It is an frustration was not simply at the arresting spectacle in operation. grindingly tedious labor of checking manually evaluated This machine will be on display at the Computer His- tables, but at the daunting unreliability of those tables. tory Museum for one year, beginning in September 2007. Science, engineering, construction, banking, and Guest curator Doron Swade, formerly of London’s Science insurance depended on tables for calculation. Ships Museum, will be scheduling lectures both about Charles navigating by the stars relied on them to find their Babbage and about the Science Museum’s task of building position at sea. the Difference Engine. Throughout the year, CHM staff Babbage launched himself on a grand venture to de- and volunteers will be demonstrating the machine, and sign and build mechanical calculating engines that would an online exhibit will provide more information about eliminate errors. His bid to build infallible machines is a Babbage and the Difference Engine. saga of ingenuity and will, which led beyond mechanized arithmetic into the entirely new realm of computing. Though Babbage was not able to realize his dream For more information about lectures, demonstration of building a mechanical calculating machine, his vision schedules, and other events, call +1 650 810 1010 or was finally achieved in 2002 when the Science Museum of visit: computerhistory.org.

Image courtesy of the Science Museum of London.

COMPUTERHISTORY.ORg /CORE  9 d o n or appre c i at i o n As of March 2007

M u s E U M C AMPA I G N C O R P O R A T E S U PPORTER S CORE SPONSOR: 16K ($16,384+) Jim and Stephanie Nisbet CORE FRIEND: 1K ($1,024+) EXA: $10M+ SUSTAIninG: $100K+ David Bohnett Foundation Charles L. Seitz Sally M. Abel and Elaine and Eric Hahn SAP Bill Carrico and Heidi Henkel Sinclair Mogens Lauritzen Donna Dubinsky and Suzan Woods Carrico Stephen L. Squires and Frances Allen Leonard J. Shustek FOUNDING: $50K+ David Cheriton Ann Marmor-Squires Connie and Charlie Bachman Bill & Melinda IBM Enrica D’Ettorre and John and Elizabeth Toole John and Sheila Banning Gates Foundation Pierluigi Zappacosta Bruce Wonnacott Joe Bardwell and Anita Lenk Homer Family Foundation INVESTING: $25K+ Peter H. and Cindy Ziebelman Allen Baum and Donya White PETA: $5M–$9.99M The Krause Foundation Microsoft Corporation Brian A. Berg L. 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3 0 CORE S P R I N G – SUMMER 2007 The Harry and Carol Saal Donald and Alice Loughry Suzanne M. Crocker Francesco Lacapra Olin Sibert Family Foundation gary W. Malone Charles Dana Donald S. Levy Thomas Sidle Peter and Valerie Samson Jay and Sharon McCauley Barton H. Darnell Jefferson D. Lilly Daniel P. Siewiorek John and Christine Sanguinetti Dianne and William D. Mensch, Jr. Clive B. Dawson Robert J. Litwiller Stephen Skedzielewski Jean Shuler Dean O. Morton Kyle Dent Melissa Lohmann David Slate David desJardins Donald Loughry Rene Sommer Roger and Elizabeth Sippl Alex and Jiali Osadzinski Jim Dinkey Douglas S. Makepeace Aaron T. Spink Richard L. Sites Debra Paget and Jeffrey Berg Michael Ditto Kunitsugu Makino Vladimir Steffel Lorna and Donn Parker Alvy Ray and Zu Smith Michael Druke Daniel Mall Steven Stepanek Jay Perry Marcelline and William Smith Jane Dryden Thomas J. Malloy Robert S. Stetson Arati Prabhakar and Verna and Bob Spinrad Kenneth Duda Julius Marcus Philip Stillman Patrick Windham Duane Dunwoodie Craig J. Mathias Oliver Strimpel Lee and Robert Sproull Tim and Lisa Robinson David Ellsworth Michael Mazour gerald Stroffolino Pamela and Edward Taft James Sagawa and Matthew Ettus Edward McCluskey Richard Taylor John and Mary Ellen Toebes Karen Roberts Debra Evans Michael McPherson Edward F. Thompson Angela Siddall Naoya and Masako Ukai guy C. Fedorkow Anthony Mezzapelle Herbert E. Thompson gordon Stitt Andrew W. Verhalen and Elizabeth Feinler Kai Mildenberger geoffrey O. Thompson Robert Supnik Janet L. Brownstone Robert Ferguson gary Miller Tommy Thorn Susan and Philip Yost Lorna and Duane Wadsworth Robert J. Ferguson Tim Mitchell Eric Tilenius Willis and Floy Ware Philip H. Fleschler Patricia Montague Frank Tobin suPPORTinG: $100+ Vern Watts geoff Fortytwo Jeffrey Moore Patricia Tomlinson george B. Adams III Sean Welsh and Louise Hornor Joseph Fredrick Mark B. Myers Frederick M. Trapnell Craig J. Addison Kenneth Friedenbach Karen L. Myers-Hackem James B. Treleaven gio and Voy Wiederhold Markus Alsleben James Fruchterman Curt Nehring Chris Tubis Warren Yogi Eric A. Barbour Mei Lin Fung Bill Newcomb Ellen Ullman Anonymous David A. Berlind Rex gardiner Dean Nichols Fyodor Vaskovich Lyle Bickley Rita gardiner Ronald H. Nicholson, Jr. Dr. Norman W. Weinstein GEnE RAL suPPORTERs Richard A. Blaine Steve golson Chuck R. Nile Tom Weishaar Daniel g. Bobrow chAMPiOn MEMBERs: $500+ Ed gould Josh Noble Eric J. Werme gilad Bracha Duane and Kathleen Adams Andrew grad Landon Noll greg Wetzel Charles W. Breckenridge John C. green, Jr. David Novak Donald Whittemore Dennis and Janet Austin Daniel S. Bricklin Robert grimm Tim R. Oren Ron Wigginton David and Madalyn Babcock David Brock Sharon grimshaw Doug Pearson Walt Wilkins Ann Benett Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. Jan Half Dr. John Peck Jan Willbanks Steve and Jane Bourne Bathan Brookwood Rollin C. Harding James L. Pelkey Vivian Wills Alison Chaiken and Jeff Broughton Jack Harker george J. Perry Duane K. Wise Wolfgang Rupprecht Charles D. Brown Alys Hay William Pollock Dr. Richard Wishner Harry Chesley and Suzana Seban John C. Brown Dr. Martin E Hellman Catherine Povejsil Frank Yellin Dona L. Crawford Michael A. Brown Dan Henderson Vaughan Pratt William Yundt Lori Kulvin Crawford Robert Brown Dewayne Hendricks William Price John g. Zabolitzky Steve and Beth Crocker g. Edward Bryan george Herman Hedley Rainnie Kenneth Drexler Jack Burness Daniel S. Hill Rob Reis John R. Ehrman David Burwen Winston Hindle Chris Ridder Sarah and David Epstein Clay Busker Ron Hochsprung Michael M. Roberts sOLuTiOn TO PAGE 32 Chris Byrne Jim and Kenna Fenton Jack Holloway David P. Rodgers cROssWORd PuzzLE Lance and Wendy glasser Paul D. Carmichael Marc W. Howard Jo Ann H. Roizen Adam Cash David and Dee gustavson Ole J. Jacobsen James Rumbaugh Robert H. Chaney M O D E L S Richard Hawes Luanne Johnson Jeffrey Safire A B Peter Cirigliano K S L I D E A M A T P Mary C. Henry Charles Jones Rita Seplowitz Saltz L R R I T R Thomas Clewe A C O M P U T E R A O John Impagliazzo, PhD Curtis A. Jones Ferrell Sanders N O Y C E Y W N T Arthur Cohen Jeff Kellem Kevin Savetz D N F R O David Jeschke S S U E K T Danny Cohen Harwood g. Kolsky Morey Schapira B U A P S H A I I Y Randy H. Katz G O L D R U S H G T L P Edward Cohen Alan Kotok David Schweizer O N H E N D R I E Thomas E. Kurtz ge C H A S E N K A M P A orge E. Comstock Edward Kramer William Scull H L David A. Laws L Michael A. Coulter Phillip Kurjan geoffrey Shearer Susan Lesch george W. Crabb James Kurkowski Richard Shoup

PASSAGES We are saddened to report on Donald wilson—November 25, 2006 Jim Gray—January 29, 2007 the passing of these computer LexisNexis developer (missing at sea) Database pioneer pioneers since January 1, 2006. al Shugart—December 12, 2006 Disk drive industry pioneer Doug Ross—January 31, 2007 CAD and software methodology pioneer alan kotok—May 26, 2006 Richard Newton—January 2, 2007 Computer pioneer, architect, programmer Electronic design automation and ken kennedy—February 7, 2007 Bernard Galler—September 4, 2006 integrated circuit design pioneer High-performance computing pioneer Computer pioneer, educator, founding Jean Ichbiah—January 26, 2007 John Backus—March 21, 2007 editor, Annals of the History of Computing Principal designer of Ada programming FORTRAN team leader language Ray Noorda—October 9, 2006 karen Spärck Jones—April 4, 2007 Businessman, CEO of Novell (1982–1994) Neil Lincoln—January 26, 2007 Pioneer in AI and natural language Supercomputing architect and pioneer processing

COMPUTERHISTORY.ORg /CORE  chM BY THE NUMBERS

$77,346,995 donated to the Museum It’s your museum. Campaign. Only $47,653,005 to go!

IN THE COLLECTION Customize it. 4,000 linear feet of documents (or 12 million pages) 5,000 videos and films 5,000 software titles 20,000 photographs My CHM is a 20,000 objects and ephemera personalized interface that lets you track the SINCE MOvING TO OUR Museum news and PERMaNENT BUILDING IN 00 information that’s most important to you. 4 million visitors to the Museum’s Through a personal login website at computerhistory.org, 29,692 tour attendees you can stay informed 2,263 Museum members about coming events, 671 people who have volunteered keep track of the gifts 473 events held with 69,955 attendees you’ve made, and more. 123 oral histories recorded Visit us online and sign 53 lectures held with 15,038 attendees up today! 27 staff additions 16 new Fellows

cROssWORd PuzzLE

ACROSS 1 2

1 IBM System/360 artifacts used as sales 3 and planning tools. 4 5 6 4 Slide-based browsing system. 7 Initials of the company that made the 7 recently donated time clock. 8 8 IBM UK’s film “Man & _____.” 9 10 9 Chairman of Intel until his retirement in 1979. 14 Temple of _____. 11 12 15 “The early 1980s were the _____ days for the personal computer” (two words). 13 14

16 Board member profiled in this issue. 15 17 German moving company that assisted 16 with the SAP collection. 17

DOWN

2 California port city where the SAP collection arrived. 3 Telebit was founded by CHM Fellow Paul _____. 5 MIT professor defeated by MacHack VI. 10 A CalTech student sold a punch card _____. 6 “Often a _____ can show the genesis of 11 “Day One at _____.” an important idea or a ‘road not taken.’” 12 Cofounder of Digital Research, Inc. ALL ANSWERS CAN BE FOUND IN THIS ISSUE 8 The first UNIVAC was sold to the 13 The Atkinson and Hertzfeld Oral History OF CORE. SOLUTION TO PUZZLE ON PAgE 31. United States _____ Bureau. was conducted by Grady _____.

 CORE SPRINg – SUMMER 2007 Help us preserve the information age before anybody forgets it.

Become a member VOLUNTEER

Today, people take technology as much for granted as the Help us explain technology to the outside world. This is air they breathe. It’s the mission of the Museum to preserve a perfect opportunity to share your knowledge and your the remarkable history of technology and to celebrate the enthusiasm for computers. As a Museum volunteer, you can accomplishments of the extraordinary people who have help in building the collection and restoring computing done so much. As a member, you’ll help us preserve our artifacts. You can assist with lectures, receptions, tours, heritage. And you’ll enjoy a number of benefits, including: and special events, or help us with administration and • Complimentary admission to the Museum’s operations. In the process, you’ll also interact with industry speaker series and speaker receptions leaders, expand your knowledge of computer history, and enjoy the satisfaction of helping us build a world-class • Discount admission to special Museum activities museum and research institution. • Member email announcements • Subscription to Core magazine To learn more, call +1 650 810 1027 • Museum memento or visit us online at: computerhistory.org/volunteers • And more

Call +1 650 810 1883 or join online at: computerhistory.org m y s ter y i tem Who are these people and what computer is that?

Last issue’s mystery item was a rope memory unit from the Apollo Guidance Computer. Congratulations to Brian Knittel, Mike Albaugh, and Randy Neff for correctly identifying it. Each of these lucky people will receive a “25th Anniversary of the Microprocessor” poster.

Rope memory is a special form of magnetic core memory (“core”). While core is useful for storing temporary or changing results, rope memory is a form of read-only memory (ROM) that will keep its contents even in the absence of power. This quality Photo courtesy of Regency Pictorials, Inc. made it particularly attractive as a means of storing the various control programs for the Apollo Take your best guess! The first three The fourth and fifth correct submis- spaceflight. It was also a very dense form of memory, though brittle and Core readers who submit correct sions will receive Computer History extremely difficult to manufacture. answers after July 1, 2007, will receive Museum posters. Email your guess to: This particular unit was made by a free copy of Core Memory: A Visual [email protected]. Burroughs. Survey of Vintage Computers. Good luck!

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