cfmcdonald's blog

Our esteemed chair, Tom Haigh, noticed a rather shocking set of stories in the mainstream press today that claimed that a man previously unknown to the computer history community was, in fact, the inventor of e-mail:

Last year, around this time, I submitted a blog post summarizing the obituaries of a number of major figures in the history of computing who died in 2010. Given the worldwide headlines in response to the death of Steve Jobs two months ago, I think it makes sense to turn that post into a yearly tradition, reminding us of the less-recognized contributors to the history of computing who we have lost.   I was, in fact, rather stunned at the number of names turned up by a simple search for stories containing "obituary" and "computer"  in the last twelve months in the New York Times.  The computing of the 1960s and 70s is now rapidly passing out of the realm contemporary and oral history.Here's what I turned up:

Apropos of my post a while back on the hidden engineers behind Steve Jobs' recent triumph, video-game historian Benj Edwards has posted an article on MacWorld that provides a nice synthetic account of the origins of the iPod.  Edwards covers a number of the major figures responsible for the design and development of the iPod.  Tony Fadell (formerly of the General Mag

Apologies for my recent radio silence, and thanks to Marie for picking up the slack.  I still don't have anything terribly profound to say, but I wanted to point out a wonderful on-line historical resource that went up a couple of months ago: MIT's 150th anniversary interviews, dubbed Infinite History. The dozens of interviews at the site, with important figures in MIT's academic history,  include both a video and a synchronized transcript.   Interviews in the collection relevant to the history of computing include Leo

The Internet has been inundated with stories about Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO of Apple.

A recent Wired article on Khan Academy gave me a distinct sense of déjà vu.  A pre-programmed set of lessons that are written once, and then can be used by kids anywhere in the country?  They allow students to proceed at their own pace, simulating the advantages of one-on-one tutorial instruction?  They ensure that a student have mastered a given concept before allowing him or her to move on to more advanced material?  Data on student performance is automatically collected for analysis by educators?  A claim that all of this is totally new and is going to revolutionize the staid old American education system?  Where have I heard this all before...

Like any well-trained Ph.D. student, I have come to see my own discipline as the master discipline, upon which all other forms of knowledge are based. For instance, I have repeatedly pestered my fianceé, who works in math education, with the idea of teaching mathematics historically. What better way (I enthuse) to teach, say, imaginary numbers than to understand why they were invented in the first place; the historical context that led to their emergence.Still convinced (perhaps quite foolishly) that this is a brilliant idea, I have begun to think recently about how the same concept might apply in computing--how, that is, the history of computing might be used to teach computer science.

A couple weeks back I discussed Matthew Lasar's article on Ars Technica about the invention of the PC. Lasar has done it again this week with an excellent piece on the surprising persistence of old technologies.  Tech pundits, Lasar notes, are very quick to declare technology dead or obsolescent, when the latest, hot thing comes along:

David Ferro recently posted on the SIGCIS mailing list about the release of his and Eric Swedin's new edited volume, Science Fiction and Computing. This is a sequel, of sorts, to a workshop at the Society for the History of Technology meeting in Tacoma last fall. I thought it would be appropriate to re-post this announcement here for further publicity and discussion, given the extent to which the book is a product of this community. As David wrote, the contributors (other than the editors themselves) include Thomas Haigh, Janet Abbate, Paul Ceruzzi, David A.

Journalists across the Web (mostly) celebrated the 100th birthday of IBM last week, on June 16th. See for instance, coverage at The New York Times, Wired, and Forbes. My history of computing colleagues at the IT History blog also covered the story, with a business history perspective from Joel West. As a former IBMer, I can't help but feel a small twinge of pride at this milestone.