Routines of Substitution
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Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee: Association for Computing Machinery, General Meeting Participants: Walter Carlson, Henry Tropp, Ed Berkeley, Harry Hazen, Dick Clippinger, Betty Holberton, John Mauchly, Ross ?, Chuan Chu, Bob Campbell, Franz Alt, Tom ?, and Grace Murray Hopper Date: August 14, 1972 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History CARLSON: …before the full event of the evening gets started. The first thing I would like to do, the important thing to do, is thank Honeywell for providing the equipment and staff to put this particular section on tape. We are very grateful for their participating with us in this event. The history project started in 1967 as a joint effort between AFIPS and The Smithsonian, and has been undertaken at various levels of activity since then, and is now at a vary high level of activity under Henry Tropp, who is the principal investigator at The Smithsonian, and will be sitting in this chair in my place a little later. The project at the moment is concentrating very heavily on the work that was done at the Bell Laboratories in the late ‘30s, work that was done at Harvard in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, and the work that was done at NASA, at Iowa State, and at other locations. While that intensive research into those areas of activity is underway, we have been engaged in some events, if you will, among the people who had a lot to do with computer activities, and we’ve had one that some people in the room I recognize participated in out in the West Coast in December. -
The Other Women of ENIAC Rethinking IT Innovation Thomas Haigh
The Other Women of ENIAC Rethinking IT Innovation Thomas Haigh www.tomandmaria.com/tom University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee & Siegen University IEEE SV Tech History Committee Event Santa Clara, CA – 20 March 2017 www.SiliconValleyHistory.com This Research Is Sponsored By • Mrs L.D. Rope’s Second Charitable Trust • Mrs L.D. Rope’s Third Charitable Trust Thanks for contributions by my coauthors Mark Priestley & Crispin Rope. And to assistance from others including Ann Graf, Peter Sachs Collopy, and Stephanie Dick. www.EniacInAction.com CONVENTIONAL & POPULAR HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE 1940S www.EniacInAction.com “Lone Genius” View • Example Alan Turing, according to The Imitation Game – “I don’t have time to explain myself as I go along, and I’m afraid these men will only slow me down” • Hand building “Christopher” – In reality hundreds of “bombes” manufactured www.EniacInAction.com The Battle for “Firsts” www.EniacInAction.com Isaacson’s “The Innovators” • Many admirable features – Stress on teamwork – Lively writing – References to scholarly history – Goes back beyond 1970s – Stresses role of liberal arts in tech innovation • But going to disagree with some basic assumptions – Like the subtitle! www.EniacInAction.com Amazon • Isaacson has 7 of the top 10 in “Computer Industry History” – 4 Jobs – 3 Innovators www.EniacInAction.com Teams of Superheroes www.EniacInAction.com The “Computer Tree” www.EniacInAction.com ENIAC in Computer History • Often called the first – “electronic, digital, general-purpose computer” • A step on the path to the “first stored- program computer” www.EniacInAction.com www.EniacInAction.com Historiography of Early Computing • Traditional focus for the 1940s – Obsessed with “firsts” – Reduces each computer to a single date of first operation – Considers only architectural innovations – Doesn’t care about what computers were used for • This leaves out an enormous amount! • Hence: ENIAC in Action www.EniacInAction.com DESIGNING ENIAC www.EniacInAction.com Sponsor: U.S. -
NBS-INA-The Institute for Numerical Analysis
t PUBUCATiONS fl^ United States Department of Commerce I I^^^V" I ^1 I National Institute of Standards and Tectinology NAT L INST. OF STAND 4 TECH R.I.C. A111D3 733115 NIST Special Publication 730 NBS-INA — The Institute for Numerical Analysis - UCLA 1947-1954 Magnus R, Hestenes and John Todd -QC- 100 .U57 #730 1991 C.2 i I NIST Special Publication 730 NBS-INA — The Institute for Numerical Analysis - UCLA 1947-1954 Magnus R. Hestenes John Todd Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics University of California California Institute of Technology at Los Angeles Pasadena, CA 91109 Los Angeles, CA 90078 Sponsored in part by: The Mathematical Association of America 1529 Eighteenth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20036 August 1991 U.S. Department of Commerce Robert A. Mosbacher, Secretary National Institute of Standards and Technology John W. Lyons, Director National Institute of Standards U.S. Government Printing Office For sale by the Superintendent and Technology Washington: 1991 of Documents Special Publication 730 U.S. Government Printing Office Natl. Inst. Stand. Technol. Washington, DC 20402 Spec. Publ. 730 182 pages (Aug. 1991) CODEN: NSPUE2 ABSTRACT This is a history of the Institute for Numerical Analysis (INA) with special emphasis on its research program during the period 1947 to 1956. The Institute for Numerical Analysis was located on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. It was a section of the National Applied Mathematics Laboratories, which formed the Applied Mathematics Division of the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), under the U.S. -
Herman Goldstine
From the collections of the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, NJ These documents can only be used for educational and research purposes (“Fair use”) as per U.S. Copyright law (text below). By accessing this file, all users agree that their use falls within fair use as defined by the copyright law. They further agree to request permission of the Princeton University Library (and pay any fees, if applicable) if they plan to publish, broadcast, or otherwise disseminate this material. This includes all forms of electronic distribution. Inquiries about this material can be directed to: Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library 65 Olden Street Princeton, NJ 08540 609-258-6345 609-258-3385 (fax) [email protected] U.S. Copyright law test The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or other reproduction for purposes in excess of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s Transcript Number 15 (PMC15) © The Trustees of Princeton University, 1985 HERMAN GOLDSTINE (with ALBERT TUCKER) This is an interview of Herman Goldstine at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, on 22 March 1985. -
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee: Ingerman Interviewer: Date: June 17, 1971 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History Description: No transcript Abstract: Citation: Computer Oral History Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Copyright: Copyright to this oral history is held by the Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Permission to quote from the transcript under the fair use provision of the copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) is granted provided that this source is cited. For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee: David R. Israel Interviewer: Richard R. Mertz Date: April 22, 1970 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History Description: Transcript, 40 pp. Abstract: Israel, born in 1927, came from a family that wanted him to be a Harvard-trained lawyer; instead, he studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) from 1945 to 1949, interrupting his work for thirteen months to work on radio in the Navy. At MIT, he studied numerical computation with Z. Kopal, analog computers with S.H. Caldwell, and programming digital computers with W.G.Welchman. He did graduate work at MIT's Digital Computer Laboratory. There, following the lead of Jay Forrester, he became especially interested in real time computer applications and wrote a thesis on civilian air traffic control in 1951. He also worked on Project Charles, a program intended to use the Whirlwind computer for defense against manned bombers. The Whirlwind featured self-controlled marginal checking, core memory, a light pen, and real time control applications. -
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee: John W. Mauchly (1907-1980) Interviewer: Henry Tropp Date: January 10, 1973 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History TROPP: This is a discussion with Dr. John Mauchly in his home in Ambler, Pennsylvania. The date is the 10th of January, 1973. Is that correct, Dr. Mauchly? MAUCHLY: I think it is. TROPP: Okay, let's just try this for sound. (Recorder off) As I mentioned before we started taping, I'm going to limit my questions on the beginning of this tape to roughly the Moore School and immediate post-Moore School period. And I think we'll start with the question that we discussed briefly; namely, really why did you leave a whole professoriate in physics at Ursinus to go to Penn as an instructor? MAUCHLY: Well, the real brief answer is that there was more opportunity. I think it needs a little more explanation though. TROPP: Right, right. MAUCHLY: That is, the opportunity to do something which was in many ways an engineering project, such as building a large computer, was close to zero at a small liberal arts college; and I had already convinced myself by a few explorations that I couldn't just jump into an industrial job with better pay and get the opportunity I wanted there. So when the chance came to take an electronics course at the University of Pennsylvania at government expense, I took that. And then when, after the summer of '4l, I was offered a position on the faculty, not on the faculty, but the staff of the Moore School as an instructor, why of course the same question occurred to me, you know, that an instructor is a pretty low rank For additional information, contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 John Mauchly Interview, January 10, 1973, Archives Center, National Museum of American History when you've been a full professor. -
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee
Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977 Interviewee: Forman Acton Interviewer: Richard R. Mertz Date: January 21, 1971 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History Description: Transcript, 48 pp. Abstract: Forman Acton, born in 1920, completed a degree in chemical engineering at Princeton in 1944, spent the rest of World War II in the U.S. Army's engineering detachment at Oak Ridge, and then earned a doctorate in applied mathematics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, working especially with J.L. Synge and Albert Heins. He took an early interest in communicating engineering problems to digital computers. After graduation, Acton spent three years at the U.S. National Bureau of Standard's Institute for Numerical Analysis at the University of California at Los Angeles. There he taught numerical analysis and developed programming for the SWAC, then under construction. In 1952 Acton returned to Princeton to direct the weapons systems analysis group and teach courses in the Mathematics Department. Four years later he joined the faculty of the Princeton Electrical Engineering Department, where he remained for the rest of his career. In Los Angeles Acton made extensive use of the first Card Programmed Calculator; back at Princeton he used Model II of the CPC. He also comments on the LAS computer, both as it was developed by von Neumann and as it was later used in the electrical engineering department. Another machine discussed at some length is the IBM 650, the first commercial computer purchased by Princeton. Acton refers to numerous contemporaries, especially J. Curtiss, J.B. Rosser, A. -
Binary Codes. a Gender-Informed Discussion on Professionalism in Nascent Digital Computing
http://www.aboutgender.unige.it Vol. 5 N° 9 anno 2016 pp. 103-122 Binary codes. A gender-informed discussion on professionalism in nascent digital computing Mariacristina Sciannamblo Università di Roma Sapienza Abstract This article explores the connections between two analytical concerns within the field of history and social studies of science and technology, namely the demand to reform the history of computing on the one hand, and the use of ‘gender’ as analytical category on the other. I shall bring into focus the “question of professionalism” (Ensmenger 2001) in computer fields as a crucial point through which to shed light on the controversial role of women in computing industry, along with the benefit of aligning the history of computing with feminist perspectives. The article focuses on the dawn of digital computing era in the USA by discussing the work of the first women programmers behind the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC). The argument that I advance is that the attempts to build computer work as a professional field and expertise are in many respects biased by gendered discursive and material practices. 103 Keywords: digital computing, gender, professionalism, women, expertise. 1. Introduction In a recent column titled The Tears of Donald Knuth, Thomas Haigh (2015) addresses under renovate spirit some controversial issues regarding the relationship between the discipline of computer science and the growing body of work on the history of computing1. The article takes shape from a talk given by the famous computer scientist Donald Knuth at Stanford University2. In his reflections, Haigh challenges Knuth’s complaint that historians are following a discouraging trend in doing history of computer science by ignoring technical details and, in so doing, “dumbing down” their mission and outcomes. -
Product System
5 PRODUCT SYSTEM INTRODUCTION We have noted that a new economic functional system is constructed from the new high-tech products of the new technology. We have also seen that technologies are a kind of system and emphasized that invention of the technology system is the first part of innovation. The second part of innovation, commercialization, occurs by de- signing the new technology into new products (or services or operations). Now we look at high-tech products, and we will see how products, too, are systems. As the idea of a technology system is fundamental to innovation theory, so is the idea of a product system. But there is an important difference between them. A technology system is knowledge, and a product system is a utility. The knowledge of a tech- nology is embodied in the design of a useful product. We will review the idea of a product as a system, including the basic ideas of: product architecture and com- plexity and the differing roles of technology in product, service, production, and operations systems. As an example of a product system, we use the case of the computer. It makes an interesting illustration, since the technology in a computer is complex in both physical morphology and schematic logic. First we look at the invention of the elec- tronic computer and then we look at the design of an early computer product, the PDP-8 minicomputer. CASE STUDY: F Invention of the Computer Like the ancient invention of iron, the computer was one of those great inventions that change human civilization—an invention of mythic scale—a Promethean in- vention.