Featured Projects Archive

Pioneers of Algol

 Pioneers in the in the development of the
ALGOL programming language.

Software for Europe: Constructing Europe through Software

A group of historians have won a highly competitive award from the European Union to carry out a project on the history of software in Europe. The project involves researchers from the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Finland, Belgium, France, England, Greece, Germany, and the United States.

[READ MORE]

 

The Internet and American Business

How would you write a history of the Internet? The subject is rapidly changing and expanding into virtually every aspect of everyday life. If one looks at the best histories of the Internet that currently exist, such as books by historians Janet Abbate or Arthur Norberg, or by journalist Katie Hafner, one sees a picture of the Internet as a technology used only for military and scientific purposes, by hundreds or at most thousands of users. The Internet that we know today, with millions of people using it for business and personal purposes, happen too late to come across at all in these accounts. One group of scholars has made a first attempt to write a history of the Internet as we know it.

[READ MORE]

 

Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight

One of the member's of the ITHS historical advisory committee, David Mindell, who is the Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program, at MIT, has recently published a major study in the history of IT, entitled Digital Apollo (MIT Press, 2008).

"Digital Apollo is an excellent and unique historical account of the lengthy and often pitched struggle of designers, engineers, and pilots to successfully integrate man and complex computer systems for the Apollo lunar landings. It brings back fond memories."
--Edgar Mitchell, Sc.D.; Captain, USN (retired) Lunar Module Pilot, Apollo 14

[READ MORE]