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Showing 102 articles
October 21, 2012
Microsoft's Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid in Conversation with NYT's John Markoff @CHM
On October 16th, Rick Rashid, Microsoft Research's first employee and now its Chief Research Officer, engaged in a spirited conversation with NY Times science & technology journalist John Markoff at the Computer History (CHM) museum in Mt View, CA. The discussion was part of the museum’s...
October 9, 2012
Exciting New Happenings at Computer History Museum: Blog, Social Media, Digital Repository, Exhibits & Events!
1. The venerable Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mt View, CA recently launched a multimedia blog, with contributors from their seasoned staff of curators and subject matter experts. CHM Prez John Hollar told me, "This has been one of the most important initiatives CHM has taken in the area of...
August 1, 2012
Ken Segall at CHM: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success
A Sell Out/SRO crowd of over 400 people attended an outstanding Computer History Museum (CHM) talk by Ken Segall, author of the book, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success. Mr. Segall was interviewed by Harry McCracken of Time magazine about his experiences with Steve Jobs...
July 9, 2012
The future of computers ain't what it used to be
Back in a previous century — when I was a doctoral student and aspiring academic — I met some interesting researchers who were then trying to contradict (or at least temper) some of the wild claims made about the first mover advantage. Anyone who knows the computer industry knows that IBM didn’t...
April 18, 2012
It's a trap!
I listened to a radio program on the subject of trap streets. Fictitious streets, towns and other pieces of geography added to a map made copying detectable, since if the other map had been independently created it could not contain these inventions, a trap. This phenomenon has come into sharp...
April 6, 2012
Bell Labs
The Computer History Museum recently hosted a forum with John Gertner, the author of a new book about Bell Labs. Here is the link. Gertner discusses the many world-changing inventions and innovations that came out of the Labs, especially during its peak years of innovation from the late 1920s...
March 19, 2012
The Sweet Spot
PC World recently ran an interesting piece about vintage DP equipment still being used on a daily basis, for practical purposes. They even found someone using punched card accounting equipment. I don't go back that far, but the other day I got a chuckle from a co-worker when I needed to do a simple...
September 28, 2011
Another Historic Plaque
By now you must know that I am fond of historic plaques, especially ones that have to do with the District of Columbia or Northern Virginia. Here's another one, from Arlington: The full text reads: The ARPANET, a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense,...
September 26, 2011
The History of Enterprise Software
Software Advice, an online reviewer of ERP software, has published a four-part series on the history of enterprise software. In the series, Lara Zuehlke, Managing Editor at Software Advice, investigates how computing hardware and software evolved from punched cards all the way to the Internet and...
August 12, 2011
After 30 years, is the IBM PC reign ending?
Thirty years ago, the International Business Machines company introduced its first general-purpose personal computer, the 5150. (The IBM 5100 and DisplayWriter were also personal computing devices, but most people don’t count them as a first.) Although I have written about August 1981, I would have...
June 16, 2011
Happy birthday, Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the 1911 formation of the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through the merger of the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Company and the Tabulating Machine Company. We probably wouldn’t care, except that in 1914 CTR appointed...
April 27, 2011
Mainframe History and the First Users' Groups (SHARE)
“Programming” (and programming support) was an old data processing concept that originally was broadly defined as the adaptation of general-purpose devices to specific tasks. Programming therefore goes back to Herman Hollerith wiring and rewiring (programming) his equipment to handle specific...