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History and Culture of Computing?
living phoenix wrote: "I'm currently working on the feasibility of teaching a class in the history and culture of computing for a collegiate senior thesis project. Basically, I would spend a little over a year studying the subject matter to create enough class materials for 3 hour per week class sessions for 16 weeks. I would like to cover, in very brief terms, the "invention" of zero and the positional number system as it relates to computers, mechanical computers including Babbage's Analytical Engine, analog computing, ENIAC, EDVAC, the Mark Series and the first "bug", the PDP series up through the moderns with shorter stops at the creation of the internet and systems design. This is a massive undertaking for me, in part because I have so much research to do to simply select the points that are best suited for a 16 week course. Has anyone ever taken a course such as this, heard of such a course, or know anyone who has taught the course? Also, I'm making a request for research materials, if you have a text that you thought was intriguing and/or would pertain well with the course objectives please let me know so I can use them in my research." Well, just searching slashdot I see a CNET article and a book review that will help you out. And don't forget the history of Unix. My guess is that there will be too much material - the hard part will selecting what is important to keep in and what can be left out.
And don't forget to cover the history of foobar. This is essential to your course.
If you're going to spend a year researching this, you should considering putting it into textform or e-text form so you can potentially sell this.
I would guess many others are interested in this subject (I am, as a grad student and a teacher) and would be interested in taking this course and/or buying the book.
Good luck, and great idea!
Must...Follow...Collective.k
Must...Not...Have...Own...Ideas.
Must...Get...Culture...Prepackaged...From...Boo
Wow, that pretty much describes the class that I'm taking now at the University of Minnesota. How would you differentiate your class from an ordinary history of computing class? I guess you mentioned the `culture' of computing, which might make it different from what I'm taking. Also, my class is dealing a lot with how the government of USA (and occasionally others) funded quite a few important programs..
Anyway, I'm taking a class with Arthur Norberg, and we're using 4 books:
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986 by Arthur L. Norberg and Judy E. O'Neill
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I don't know whether you have the time and money for the trip, but a very good recommendation (worldwide) is the German Museum of Technologies in Munich (Deutsches Museum). They have a very extensive coverage of computer sciences beginning with simple mechanical caluclators like the ones of Leibniz and Pascal over the (working!) Zuse Z3 (a 1945 computer) up to the modern developments of today's microprocessors (but not operating systems or software).
Very interesting is to take a guide and have it all explained to you. There is also a book available at the museum store, which can possibly be ordered online and in English (Publications (German)).
Possibly there is also a museum about history of sciences somewhere in the U.S., but if you plan a trip to Europe anyway, the German Museum of Technologies is definately worth the time for you.
Sebastian
Don't forget Accidental Empires/Triumph of the Nerds, for the more modern bits. ;)
les
w00ly mammoth wrote:
Who invented the zero?
There are a couple of cultures that dispute the invention of zero: The Mayans and the Indians. The Mayans came up with the concept of zero sometime around two thousand five hundred years ago, and used it in their calculations and other symbolic representations. For example, the Mayan origin of time is at 31.August, 3114 BC. This was expressed in Mayan as: 13-0-0-0-0, and could be read as 13 cycles of 400 years ago. This cycle ends on 27.December.2012, where the Mayan calendar will roll back to 1-0-0-0-0.
Unlike our numeric system, the Mayan system was base 20 (does that mean they began counting with their fingers and toes? Those sandals sure are useful in tropical climates...). Zero is used to express "the beginning before the count".
It is argued that the number zero was also invented in India and adopted by the Arabs around 1000 AD. Archeological findings (AFAIK -- AINAA), however, place the invention of zero in the hands of the Mayans at least 500 years before.
Please feel free to correct my ignorance.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
It is even not sure who invented the Macintosh, perhaps it was Jef Raskin perhaps some others (even Jobs) had a good idea or two during its development too.
It's amazing that with all the people involved in these inventions still alive today, nobody quite agrees on who invented what.
Jef Raskin is certainly not amused. While I can't judge if he was the true father of the mac, his saying that the truth was far less sexy than the common myth (he a former professor in contrast to some dropped out students) seems reasonable to me. Raskin had the necessary background, and it is more probable to me that the mac was no accident but the result of a longer line of thought.
It's another matter trying to figure out who invented the first computer.
Sure, Konrad Zuse together with his Plankalkül language.
By the way - that teacher has to tell, that one of the first higher languages, COBOL, was invented by a woman, Admiral Grace Hopper.
Last summer, I was looking into designing an interdisciplinary major relating to computers and social science. I found my school has a 500-level course in the History of Computing taught by a Dr. Thomas Bergin. For some more information:
f ault.htm - A dated web site about a history of computing project sponsored by the Sloan Foundation
http://www.csis.american.edu/ - Department web site
http://www.clark.american.edu/~tbergin/ - Professor's web site
http://www.csis.american.edu/museum/sloan/html/de
Hope that helps some!
If you want a good summary of the culture behind the invention of the internet, I would recommend John Naughton's book "A Brief History of the Future".
A good background read is Andrew Hodge's excellent biography of Turing - covers both the life of this founding father of computing and the early british crypto effort (which used the first electical computers, more or less).
http://www.acooke.org
While how you'd present things is your call, if I were teaching the course I'd very much try to mention the social context of computing history. For instance the influence the space program had on the development of the integrated circuit.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'd reorder things a bit. While the first major use of computers was number crunching, it was number crunching for crytography. WWII code breaking was why the U.K. developed the first digital computers (and what Turing was doing). It was also a major cause of the U.S. work, though I wonder how much was also done for the Manhattan Project, does anyone know?
First off, don't neglect the British --- Williams tubes (early CRT memories), index registers, and demand paging from Manchester alone; the first well documented subroutine library, first commercial use of a computer in business (Lyons LEO), and a very influential textbook from the EDSAC group at Cambridge. (It's interesting to note that the word "page" was already used at Manchester for a unit of physical memory block-transferred to backing storage --- magnetic drum --- in Alan Turing's manual for the commercialized Manchester Mk. I).
Second, emulators are available for a lot of historical systems --- Bob Supnik has his SIMH suite of emulators for most of the PDP computers, and a few other early minis from IBM, DG, and so forth. Historical Unix (v5, v6, v7) is generally available and does boot on the PDP-11 emulator. He's still working on the PDP-10, for which see also Tim Stark's ts10, also in alpha, but already booting TOPS-10; TOPS-20 and ITS are on the todo list. (The annoying thing is that working PDP-10 emulators do exist, but are not available to the public).
There's a limit to the versimilitude here --- virtual tape never kinks up, the virtual card readers never jam, and the emulators often run an order of magnitude faster than the real machines on modern hardware. But they can still help give student a feel of the environments that people had to deal with thirty and forty years ago.
- Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
- aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
- Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
- Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
- The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
- High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
- Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)
Finally, I would require students to go to the "Vintage Computer Festival if you're in the Bay Area. There are other useful resources there (such as the mailing list). There's also the Computer History Museum Center in Moffet Field, near Mountain View.Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller
Tom Geller
Check your school's library for the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, ISSN 1058-6180.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
There's material for several courses.
I'd include the following:
(1) History of the technology- all the way back
to Babbage, picking up after the WWII with the
first programmable mainframes, minis, PCs, PDAs,
and NET.
Then there is the parallel history of software.
Concepts of programming, assembler, compilers,
clients, distributed, databases, games, browsers and so on.
Proprietary until 1970s, then a mass software market and immense wealth afterwards.
(2) Engineer/programmer/hacker culture.
Books by Levy, Cringley, and Katz. "Soul of a machine" by Kidder.
(3) Business cycles- moguls and busts.
Rise, fall, and resurection of IBM. Apple.
MicoSoft. Silly Valley. Rise and fall and rise
and fall of gaming. Famous speculative bubbles
like minicomputers, expert systems, and the InterNet. Books by Stross.
(4) Literature and movies, including sci-fi.
2001: Space Odyssy, Asimov's computer and robot
stories, Neuromancer, Crytomonium(?). Lots of stuff.
Speculation versus reality.
Intrigued by this (which I had never heard of), I found a link to more information.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
If you want to plan such a course, here are some interesting, readable books that would be useful:
For the history of Mathematics, invention of zero, etc. read: "Mathematics: Queen & Servant of Science" by Eric Temple Bell.
Before the internet and the personal computer, two of the major uses and research topics for computers were Cryptography, and Artificial Intelligence. Of course plain old number crunching has always been important, but I don't know of any books on that.
But for the early history and development of cryptography, check out: "The Code Book: the evolution of secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to quantum cryptography" by Simon Singh
For a read on the early history of AI from a nay-sayers perspective, check out "What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason" by Hubert L. Dreyfus.
Hmmm. Possible course outline schedule:
1. History of mathematics.
2. Pre-history of computers: Abacus, mechanical machines, Pascal, Von Neumann, etc.
4. First major use of computers: number crunching. The development of mathematical algorithms.
5. The Artificial Intelligence hype of the 60's and 70's.
6. Cryptography and computers.
7. Theoretical results: Turing, the incomputability theorems, equivalence of artificial languages, "All computer languages are the same", define and describe the P=NP question. "All the interesting questions are too hard".
8. The rise of the personal computer. I think "Fire in the Valley" is supposed to be good for this but I haven't read it?
9. The rise of the internet...
Maybe about a week on each of those... you would have to move pretty quick and just hit the high points, but it would be a pretty good "tour" of computer science.
Speaking of tours, another really interesting book is: "The Turing Omnibus: 61 Excursions in Computer Science" by A. K. Dewdney. It has standalone, easy to read chapters on topics like Algorithms, Finite Automata, Simulation, Godel's theorem, The Chomsky Hierarchy, Random Numbers, Error correcting codes, Boolean Logic, Time and Space Complexity, Recursion, Neural Nets, The Fast Fourier Transform, Public Key Cryptography, Number Systems for Computing, Parallel Computing, Logic Programming, Church's Thesis, Relational Databases...
Heck, you could teach the course entirely out of "Mathematics, queen and servant of science" followed by the Turing Omnibus. That would cover everything important...
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I've given three hours worth of lectures on the history of computing. That's an entirely different scale than an entire course, but I have some idea.
Swing by your library. There will be more books than you care to read on the history of computing. My school's relatively small library has 31 books.
Some ideas that you'll easily find information for in any history of computers book:
- "ancient" history: the abacus, slide rule, mechanical adder, etc. I've had success photocopying the two parts of a slide rule onto two seperate overhead transparencies. They can be put on the glass and moved around to illustrate
their use.
- middle history: Babbage, Jacquard, Hollerith and contemporeries.
- five generations: computer historians have divided up the 20th century into five "generations" of computing. You might organize the course around these.
- history of computational theory: when who discovered what algorithm, etc.
Some other suggestions:There are several courses out there.
Finally, talk to your undergrad secretary (or equivalent) and have her put you in contact with textbook publishers. A few quick e-mails that say "I'm looking for a text for a course about..." will land you more books than you know what to do with.
Greg
In covering the culture of computers, the biggest problem you'll face is that there are so many different cultures...
David Corbin Promote Freedom - American Liberty Foundation
Much of the setting for the history of software development was set by the languages and paradigms people were using. "History of programming languages" ISDN 0-201-89502-1 is the reference. Covers C, C++, Smalltalk, Ada, Prolog, Lisp, Algol and many others...
Other materials you really ought to check out for this class include:
- Anything by Steven Levy. Hackers for geek culture history (though see the note about this in the end of the Jargon File), Insanely Great for history of Macintosh, Crypto for history of the cryptography movement.
- Cyberpunk fiction. Gibson is good, Stephenson is better (Gibson's stuff is really not written from the computer geek perspective, Stephenson's stuff is). Vinge is also quite worthwhile, from what I've read of his.
- Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg. He's a psycho luddite, but it doesn't show through in an annoying way in this book.
:)
- Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine
- Where Wizards Stay Up Late. Can't remember the names of the co-authors of this book and I don't have my copy handy, but it's a good book about the history of the Internet.
- Open Sources, an O'Reilly book with multiple essays about the Open Source movement by people who are actually in the Open Source movement (IE, Linus and RMS, and it's edited by ESR).
- Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. Really doesn't apply to this, but it's a damn good book and I want to put the full force of the Allan Crain Seal of Approval behind it.
;)
PS: Any chance you could conduct this class at the University of Missouri-Rolla? I'd like to take it.The earliest clear reference to base ten notation using zero (which was a dot) is found in the Yogabhaasya (a commentary on the Yogasutra), which was composed perhaps around the 5the century. The usage suggests that the notation was in wide use already.
Some scholars think (or used to think) that Naagaarujuna's concept of emptiness (I guess many of you have heard of this: evrything is empty, etc.) had something to do with the notion of zero.
Paa.nini's grammar (around 5th century B.C.?) uses an idea of zero substitution. A grammatical element is substituted with nothing (zero). Some think it is the invention of zero, in the sence ``nothing does some function.''
Note that Aryabha.ta was not from the 7th Century B.C., (as another poster suggested) but from the 7th century A.D.
By the way, Paa.nini's grammar pretty much sounds like a OO computer language. Declarations, short statements, classes, inheritence, functions, etc. Some linguists (I believe) tried to write Paa.nini's grammar program.
--
Help us build a better map!
This is tangential, and probably offtopic too, and who reads comment #200-and-something anyway? :)
Just a thought that hit me: what about the philosophical views if CS? I think there are two big camps of CS (boy, are we over-generalisising today) :
Those that think that CS is math (von Neumann and 99% of all CS profs
Those that think that CS is language (Ted Nelson)
Back to drinking more beer.. X-)
Does nobody here remember WGBH's 1996 PBS miniseries, The Machine that Changed the World?
There is just so much information, facts, articles, anecdotes, etc to cover. I don't want to be pessimistic, but the fact is I have read a TON of "History of Computers" and they ALL come up short in some respect. Some leave out important details, some contradict others.
When I say I have read histories, I mean it. I have a couple of "History of Computers" books - wait, let me grab one - - Here it is:
"COMPUTERS: The Machines We Think With" by D.S. Halacy, Jr. (Dell Books, 1962)
A very yellowed paperback, I might add. Pretty good book giving a good overview of the history and current progress (for the time) of computers. I have a ton more. Typically, what I have found to be the best "histories" of computers are books that are current for the time, showing the tech where it is at "right then".
The field is just so large - I daresay you could spend your life just gathering the information for the history, nevermind trying to organize it for printing (if it could fit in book form!). You could spend an entire book on the history of the punch card (and why the text monitor standard was 80 columns wide - they are related).
One frustrating thing you would find would be the number of dead ends - and lost data on various machines and systems. One area I have always wanted to find out more about was the hobbiest scene of the late 60s to early 70's, just prior to the invention of the 4004 - I am sure it existed, with people making their own machines from telephone relays and other equipment in their garages or basements - but there is so little to go on about such things (I have an article about how to build a telephone dialer system using simple logic circuits and a drum program system to dial a phone - a dial phone, mind you - for when a burglar breaks into your house - simple systems like that were being done, possibly more complex ones existed as well). It is hard to even find stuff from the 70's - I found one book digging through a used bookstore one how to build "The TV Typewriter" - most histories don't even mention it, but it is a big part of personal computing!
Good luck - you will need it. The best you will be able to do is skim. Perhaps let your students know this, teach them how to find out more about the topics themselves. There is so much out there...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
From the course syllabus...
Objectives
The Department's objectives in offering this course is to provide an introductory to the history of computation - including early computing devices and their uses, and the people who developed them.
Ideally, students who successfully complete this course will improve their understanding of how the field of computing developed and matured. They will be expected to be aware of the principal people, places, and events that shaped their profession. Such students will appreciate the broad sweep of this branch of history and be able to relate it to the social and scientific changes that were taking place during the same time frames. They will also be able to describe the concepts and show some understanding of the developments and be able to differentiate and make comparisons between them.
Additional information about a fall 1998 section of this course - namely, a collection of additional readings used to supplement the course text - is also available.
(Please note - I have "highlighted" those parts of the text which I thought gave insight toward the scope of this particular class)
I am not saying this class isn't a good class, however, judging from the syllabus alone, it seems to do just what I said could only be realisticly done; namely "skim".
It is an introductory course, not designed to give an in-depth view of the history. It seeks to only point out "principal people, places, and events", which, while these individuals are important, probably leave out a lot of minor players who made contributions to the history of computing that weren't recognized until much later, if ever (people like Jaquard, with a card controlled loom, directly influenced Babbage, and further, Herman Hollerith, who later help found IBM, which went on to make the standard 80 column punch card, which led to 80 column video displays. I am certain I am leaving out steps here, but the point is this is one known example - there are many lesser known ones, and students of the course will never know about them).
I feel that this course seeks to point students in a particular direction. Perhaps some will go further with the knowledge gained from it, but most will simply take what was said in the course as "that is all there is", and not find out more about this particular area of study.
The syllabus admits to the history of computers having a "broad sweep", something that stands out in the course of all history. I dare to think, without having taken the course, that it probably starts with Pascal's investigations and inventions (or perhaps Napier's bones for calculations), and stops at the ENIAC era, with anything after that machine being relagated to "modern" times. But the fact is a lot of investigation into logic and calculation was made long before Napier or Pascal (indeed, look at the Antikythera Mechanism for such an example), and a lot of history has been made since the ENIAC.
Alas, I fear a lot of students will never really know about it, or care.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There's no need to mention any nasty foreigners, they don't count. There's no need to mention people like Zuse, Turing, and Flowers, or machines like Colossus, Baby (better known as the Manchester Mk 1), or LEO. After all, they probably didn't really exist. They're just all myths made up by jealous, ignorant foreigners trying to pretend that America is not the sole, universal creator of all that is good or useful in the world. All hail the glorious United States of America.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It should go without saying that the Jargon File should be required reading. Not only is it informative, but it is also extremely funny.
I second that motion. Follow that link now.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Don't just cover the PDPs. They were great machines, but there was a lot more stuff going on in the 60s than them. Big, BIG machines by IBM and the Seven Dwarves (read up about this).
Also, it might be fun to find a collector who has some classic systems and have the class meet at his house once. Just get his permission first.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I would check out two course web sites. The first, taught by David Mindell at MIT looks quite good. http://web.mit.edu/STS.035/www/
s 355/
Also, I taught such a course in 1999--http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/st
and plan on revising it for the fall 2001 semester. I agree with the earlier post that you will have an abundance of materials. The Ceruzzi volume is a good basic textbook that you might use. Good luck.
Please, by all means post again when your lecture material is ready. I would be veeery interested in reading through it. :)
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+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
The class was quite a bit of work, but was very rewarding. The final research project was very cool, as Prof. Edwards was very flexible about methods of submission (paper, video, web site, etc.) and topics ranged from women in computing to digital music to a brief history of Soviet computing (and yes, you can write a 3500-4500 word paper about the history of Soviet computing).
We learned about more than just the history of computers, however. This class forced me to think about how technology affects society, long before such musings became as popular as they are today. We learned about the role that census machines played in the Holocaust, about how a military boondoggle supplied some of the key components to today's computing technology, how women who played such a key role in the early years of computing were pushed aside, and finally the role of technology in other countries.
Of course, this class holds a special place in my heart since I met my finacé while researching my paper, so I might be a little biased :)
If you're looking for good background material or for a book that's worthwhile although perhaps not primary, I thought John Van Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics To The Tehnologies Of Life And Death (Steve J. Heims, MIT Press) was an excellent jumping-off point when my prof assigned for our Science & The Social Order seminar frosh year...
Don't forget to mention Konrad Zuse and the Z-1 computer!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
For a history of clocks, try The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I take it by this you are referring to the moth found jammed in a relay of a Harvard Mark II machine in 1947. Contrary to what many believe, this is not the first usage of the word "bug" to denote a problem with a machine. The term was around long before the first computer was ever built -- it's recorded as far back as 1896, and was probably in oral use long before then. The fact that "bug" was already common in 1947 is evidenced by the Mark II's conspicuously-worded logbook entry: "First actual case of bug being found" (emphasis mine).
Regards,
I'm about to enter my final year of University next fall, and if my Uni offered something like that, I'd really enjoy it. I know that doesn't answer your question, but I hope it encourages you even if you don't get the answers you're looking for.
I'm completely fascinated with computers today, but love reading the histories as well...I can't even tell you how many times I've reading about 'The Dawn of UNIX'!
Good luck, I hope this turns out for you!
-Ben
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
While it's not exactly a typical textbook, per se, CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold could be a handy reference. It tends to cover the history of computing relatively thoroughly, from a hardware conceptual level. It isn't a book with merely names and dates to memorize the material, instead it seeks to actually explain the insights and advances which allowed computing to take place. As the book progresses, it becomes much more technical, and perhaps not as relevant, but I'd imagine that most of the book could be useful for a course like this, if nothing else to give you some background/research material.
I believe he also spent a year as the Guest Curator of the History of Computing wing of the Smithsonian (and wrote the last program ever plugged into ENIAC, which now rests there).
It's still running at the U. of Calgary as CompSci 509.
Prof. Williams has a History of Computing Web Site. ...and just clip the last directory level off that to get his own web page.
Best of Luck.
Check out the Slashdot review of Darwin Among the Machines: the evolution of global intelligence
I just completed the book. It is essentially a history of computers as it relates to philophy, math, and the nature of intelligence. Probably not the school textbook type, but perhaps good for the class recommended reading list (or your own).
Going a little bit farther with this it might be a good idea to spend time discussing "firsts" of the computing era without pointing a finger to the absolute "first". With computers it becomes harder and harder to actually point to an idea/device and say it was the first of its kind, because so many similar ideas came to fruition at approximately the same time. Yes, John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry hold the US patent for the first digital computer, but it doesn't mean that they should be the only people who hold the honor of being first. I suggest that this point should be made relatively clear so as to curtail heated discussions in the classroom, unless of course you want that kind of thing.
Of course, if you even _think_ of calling ENIAC the first I will have to find you and hurt you since Mauchly visited Atanasoff and discussed with him his ideas on this electro-mechanical marvel and even observed the uncompleted ABC where it was being built in the basement of the Physics building of ISU campus in Ames, IA.
The Smithsonian iirc has a working model of the ABC that was built recently from Atanasoff's notes and spare parts lying around the US.
This message was brought to you by a CS grad who spent 4 years at ISU being indoctrinated in how great the ABC was.
Of course it is always possible that seperate cultures with seperate languages who had number systems stumbled apon zero on their own. I mean it's not like it's something complicated... like one click shopping.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Someone else mentioned Alan Turing's thoretical contributions. His work at Blechley Park in England on code breaking during WWII is also fascinating. The book "Alan Turing: the Enigma" by Andrew Hodges makes good reading. (I am not a shill and derive no financial benefit from sales of this book.) See http://www.turing.org.uk/
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--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
If you haven't seen it, go rent (or buy) "Triumph of the Nerds." I'm old enough to have lived through the early days of the personal computer and I thought it was very entertaining. I highly recommend it as background on the PC wars aspect of the history of computing.
It may not be very scholarly, but its lots of fun!
John [gray but grinning] Miller
- Where Wizards Stay Up Late - a history of the Internet from about 1940 through until 1980. Covers John Licklider (the psychologist who invented the neural net application to computer networks), John Postel, Vint Cerf and more.
- The Nudist On The Late Shift - a very good account of the culture of Silicon Valley in the mid-90's.
- Geeks
- Anything by Robert X Cringely.
I'm away from home at the mo so can't completely check the library, but I strongly recommend "Where Wizards...".Smegma.
Don't forget the work at Bletchley Park in WW2, building the first digital computer...it's easy to because for so many years it was secret.
One approach that interests me in the history of computing is the cumulaive nature of applications.
What makes a computer different from other inventions is the fact tha tpeople keep thinking of major new applications for them. You could take an applicationa t a time and show how that idea started and how it developed. That way your work isn't strictly chronological, but goes back and forward. Example applications:
Originally, Computers were built to do hard sums - babbage's machines were designed to do statistical analysis in the search for ways to cheat at gambling! And that function continues today with the supercomputers predicting the weather.
data processing from the early business computers to the modern storecard systems that track every time I buy dogfood.
Personal productivity devices - the initial visicalc through to Office XP (Bleaarggh!) or PDA's
Communications devices - POS terminals, cash machines, the net, e-mail
Games machines - pong to Quake
Control devices - Apollo program
Fun toys for geeks - some Linux history in there - but also things like the altair and the Sinclairs
etc.etc.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
What really makes me mad is when they leave out the popular home computers of the early 80's. The Commodore 64,Coco, Atari and a few others all had a greater influence than the Mac or Apple ][ ever had. Please include these models in your history.
In my opinion, what is needed in this history class, as with all history classes, is to begin with a complete graphical timeline, and then to selectively "drill down" to key inflection points, and relate those points as effects of what came before and causes of what comes later.
The rapid pace of computer technology and knowledge means that a large portion of the progress came from the youth, and so to study the "culture of computing" means to study the youth of computing, e.g. Steve Jobs rebelling at Atari, the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 training the computer programmers of the 1990s, and of course the creation of Linux. Each generation, of course, also had its "old guard", and the interplay between the old and new guards are interesting. Inventions by the "old guard" include the transistor, microprocessor, and UNIX/C. These were quickly adopted by the youth and rapidly advanced, until these youth grew up and became their own "old guard", etc.
From analyzing a few of these scenarios, it should be possible to abstract (meta) out some "patterns" (and I am using this word in the "patterns of organizations of people" sense). From these patterns, it would be an interesting exercise to apply them to the present day in order to predict the future -- come up with some different scenarios. Archive the predictions, then rate yourself in a few years in the same sort of class, and refine the process. This refining of the process represents another meta step outward.
Then you'll be at CMM-3. Right now the class sounds like CMM-0 -- perhaps some good raw material, but not very effective.
Hop on your local USENET news server and checkout alt.folklore.computers. Or for you web-oriented folks, checkout Google's web based frontend for alt.folklore.computers. Many of the people responsible for the history of computers are lurking around there including people who worked on Multics, early IBM mainframes, and DEC PDP-10 systems. People on the a.f.c newsgroup can provide first-hand accounts of the historical culture surrounding computers. They also offer detailed information on the technical aspects of these systems.
ABC History. Also a bunch of general History of Computing links.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
I like this hands-on idea. For the full experience, though, don't forget to give them an allotment of computer time, then charge them for more when they use it all up the first time they create an accidental infinite loop.
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
Read about it in the following links:
http://www.witi.com/center/witimuseum/halloffame/1 997/eniac.shtml
(the above link has pictures of the six)
And:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,3711,00.htm l
May I oh-so-modestly direct your attention to eCompany Now's Web Guide, which is my day job. It contains an extensive section of cataloged resources on Technology History, including a large subtopic pertaining to Computing History.
... was recently taught at Metroplitan State College of Denver. I didn't have time to take it, unfortunately, but I'm well acquainted with the professor who taught it, and I'm sure she'd be glad to help you out. Her name is Dr. Judith Gurka and her e-mail is gurka(at)mscd(dot)edu. (Sorry for the spamtrap style, but you can parse it out.) Tell her I sent you.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Is that there are so many conflicting reports. Who built the first computer? What is a computer? Who actually invented the GUI? Who invented packet switching, and who implemented it first?
It goes on like that. Every area seems to have difering accounts. It will be hard to combine all of it into a single, sensible course that doesn't contradict itself.
Of course, the best place to start are books that have already been written. Check out Steven Levy's stuff (Hackers & Insanly Great), also Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Fire In The Valley, and loads more on top. Slashdot has done loads of reviews on books like these, search a bit.
Oh, and please, don't teach the falacy of the Internet. It wasn't built to survive a Nuclear attack at all.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
As many other posters have pointed out, how can you give a course about the history of computing and ignore Alan Turing ?!
Turing was undoubtably one of the great minds of the last century.
Have you ever stopped to think what the world would be like today if Alan had not been around when we needed him - the 2nd World War quite possibly would have been lost to Germany, stored program computers might not even exist or at least would be in their infancy, everythig stemming from stored computers would not exist. There are so many things we take for granted that Alan Turing through his brilliance has given us.
And for what thanks I ask you ? None, that's what. Denied when he was alive, possibly conspiratorily murdered (because of his at the time controversial & illegal sexuality (he was (fairly openly) gay)), and unknown to almost everybody now he is dead.
Strange isn't it - ask somebody who "Bill Gates" is, and chances are they know, ask somebody who "Alan Turing" is - they won't have a clue. But who is/was more important to the world.
</RANT>
---
James Sleeman
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
It's a New Zealander's perspective, so perhaps it is also a British perspective. You are right in saying that without breaking Enigma the situation could still have been resolved by the Americans and thier blasted bomb, but it would have taken much longer, and Europe probably would not have recovered - destroyed by Germany, and then destroyed again by a few carefully placed bombs. If it wasn't for Alan Turing, the humankind would be a much worse off than we are now.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
For those of you who have clueless friends out there, I've been doing a Jargon of the Day feature in my Weblog: http://www.io.com/persist1/log.php... for those who need a gentle introduction.
...When in doubt, think for yourself.
It should go without saying that the Jargon File should be required reading. Not only is it informative, but it is also extremely funny.
--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Just one datum: my brief experience with lecturing was that it took 8 hours to prepare a one hour lecture from scratch.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Your description seems to lack attention to maintaining a consistent view. Working with the origins of "zero" or positional number systems on the one hand, and worrying about the a study of a subculture of *nix users is too rapid a move from the view at 50,000 feet and 5 feet. Is this a big-picture course or a detailed examination of modern culture?
The first, in many ways, is a history of mathematics. The second, modern cultural anthropology. There may be connections and contacts between the two, but not enough to meld courses on those subjects.
Since you include ANALOG computing you open the door to non-positional number system computing. The ancient Greeks (and others) made substantial use of geometry to calculate lengths, areas, etc without a positional number system. I can only guess at what the Chinese might have done.
One does wonder if the 'culture' of the slide rule as well as the 'technology' of the slide rule culture would be included in your course. I can see the chapter now: "the slide rule and the pocket protecter."
Good luck with the course design!
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
look at the culture of Slashdot
.oO0Oo.
culture, it's pure barbarism!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
some other sites of interest are the IEEE annals of the history of computing: http://computer.org
Virginia Tech and the NSF's history of computing: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/index.html
to get another audience on this you may want to ask you question on or join http://aoir.org the association of internet researchers
My own work and teaching is centered more around the Internet, but it seems to me you want to look at the earliest foundation of computing, such as the origin of information theory, which is quite interesting in itself.
Jeremy
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
http://www.cddc.vt.edu
They actualy sued the Germans for damaged material at the end of the war.
Basicaly they saw a business oportunity and took it, making it easier to kill jews in the process.
Pedro Côrte-Real.
I tried something similar to what you are going to try, or are attempting..
I have ended up writing a paper on the the life of Alan M. Turing..(basic founder of modern comp sci)
The History department wouldn't go for it the whole history of computing idea.. so before you get to far into it.. if not already..
consider the following..
1) I ran into the problem of no one in the History Dept was willing to mentor my project thesis..as keeping the
"Historical" approach to it, as well as primary materials to be used.. , and it was also so very recent...
2) Is this going to be taught as a History Class or as a Computer Science or an MIS class? As that would be three completely different classes in itself.. I am TA'n a Computer Law and Ethics class and its really sad what seniors and juniors in computer science are turning in as far as their writing skills.. analytical ability when writing.. etc.. some of them don't even know how to use a word processor, but they know how to code(well some of them), which is just sad..
3) Though a lot of computing history has been in the last 5 to 10 years.. you shouldn't spend too much time on it..
4) Break the class into topics and show the evolution of thoughts from start to finish.
A suggested Topic Breakdown in no particular order.. mostly just a braindump..
1) Introduction, what is a computer, and the originations and overview.
(Don't over dumb the "what is a computer part", or over technicalize it either)
a) The Word Meaning
b) Early Thought
c) Mechanical Computers
2) Basic Ethics of Computers, Setting a baseline to what the class will be taught on.
3) Early Computers Pre-1940
4) Birth Of the Computer as we Know it
a) The Impact of WWII
1) IBM's Role in the Holecaust
(Don't know a lot of detail, but have heard that they were hired by Germany to help them track down the Jews in pre-war years)
2) Artillery Projection
3) Cryptology
4) Massive Influx into Research Funding for the first time..
b) Post War Thought - From Concept to Reality
c) Impact of the Cold War
1) Large Numbers of "SuperComputers"
2) Need for Networking
3) Need for Mass Storage
d) From Vacuum Tube to Transisitor
e) The Impact of the Space Race
f) Academic Research
5) The major computer manufactors and their originations.. and evolution
1) IBM and their eventual monopoly
2) Intel
3) The Former Cray Computers
4) Unisys
5) Sun Micro Systems
6) Microsoft
7) Motorolas
8) Compaq DEC (VMS)
6) Birth of the Personal Computer 1979-1992
A) The major early players (Describe the Differences in Platforms (I.e. Differnet OSs, Different Processor Base, Corporate Methods, Pros/Cons)
1) Commodore (1979-1994)
2) Apple (1979-Current)
3) IBM (1981->) and its compatibles
4) Misc Others
5) The First Wave of PC computermanufactorers dies off.. (approx 1985-1989)
6) Description of Apps and Hardware Available to them
7) The role of Mainframes and networking in general during this time..
7) The Web Boom (1992-2001(current) (It may be over, or next period may be beginning)
A) The Early Web Years 1992-1996
1) Early Online Services (AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe) and BBSs How things were done before the Internet ( I personally ran a BBS through 1996)
2) Internet before the Web
i) Government Origins
ii) Telnet, Gopher, and FTP, early utils available.
iii) Birth of HTML and the Web Browser (1992-93)
Lynx, Mosaic, Netscape, and later IE.
3) The Web Initially (1992-1995/96)
i) Very Basic, Plain HTML, Slow, Expensive
ii) Very little E-Commerence
iii) Still Mainly used by Academics, Government, and Just starting to catch on.
B) The explosion..
1) E-Commernce
Created a demand for Access and Demand for Web Servers
2) Linux Birth and Unix Revival (Begins)
3) Wide Spread Access
4) Cheap PCs
5) Faster Access (Broadband)
6) Hardware Getting Exponentially better and cheaper every few months
7) Inceased Availability of Software
8) GUI Interfaces, though introduced in 1985 by Commodore on their Amiga PCs, 1986 on Mac, and 1987 or so in MS Windows. Xerox has one of the original ideas.. but they only were using it on their copiers and such..
Well I just realized how long I have spent replying to this.. and I need to get back to what I was working on.. but if you want more ideas, etc.. email me.. I have a few books.. though I wouldn't recommend the book I am currently using in the class I am TA'n, as it is more a computer ethics class book.. but it ain't bad overall..
It could be quite a project though.. have fun.. Let me know what you go with..
But as I said I gotta go and get some things done so I can get out of college this semester..
Chris Souser aka Volhav
volhav@acerbic.org
Almost every digital computer has a clock in it. You should devote one lecture to the history of clocks.
Some of the fancy cukoo clocks built in Europe at the height of their popularity could arguably be called the first "robotic multimedia" computing devices.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'd love to know where this guy is located. I'd like to help out, but more importantly, I'd love to enroll in that college to take the course! Good luck, man.
Take a look at: http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/ Compiled by the late (but Great!) Mike Muuss (creator of ping and BRL-CAD).
I would have felt so much better if you would have at least mentioned Turing in your post to Slashdot....go back and do your homework :-)
Slashdot featured a link to a pretty good article that holds a very cute and short intro to how Alan Turing got to his infamous Turing Machine and the start of computers and computer science. It does a quicky mathematical history from Cantor through Hilbert to Godel and Turing.
I have studied computer science and find that certain facts about the history of computer science seem go better with the non-computer scientist audiences (the friends and family I try to explain too what computers are). Your lessons should at least cover the following topics:
Explain what the generalized Turing machine is and how it was (and still is) used to describe the 'limitations' of computing machines.
Explain with as little math as possible what NP means and what impact it has on computing.
Explain Moores law and compare it to other industries to show that computer science is something very very new in our world history.
I recommend reading "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil. Both an interesting overview of computing history and future.
Traa
---------------------------------
There's also the University of Manchester Department of Computer Science history and "50 years of computing at Manchester."
Or the Alan Turing Home Page.
Alan Turing used to drink at the Salisbury Arms, on Oxford Road in Manchester, which although serving a decent pint, is now way too packed in the evenings to be able to think in base 32 anymore.
What would Lemmy do?
There's also The Computer Museum History Center, though I'd be careful. I spotted 3 major omissions/mistakes in the first ten minutes of reading the site.
What would Lemmy do?
Here's the lecture notes for HS228/428: computing: history and culture.
What would Lemmy do?
Last semester our seminar course was based on Computing history. Let me tell you that it was the worst thing that I ever had to sit through in my entire life!
I ended up talking about the history of super computers, which was not that bad, but most of the people decided to talk on people like Babbage, Turing, etc.
Big waste of time!
You are not going to find much as very little has been written yet. Your idea is excellent, and a text on the subject would be an excellent Doctoral thesis. I would concentrate more on the people that built computing rather than the hardware an events. There may be a biography published on Grace Hopper. She had the most influence on the Computer culture as it grew. She was the original guru. Denis Ritche and the Bell LAb boys are still alive, interviews might be possible. Ward Christenen built the basis for communication between computers (x-moden, y-modem, z-modem etc.). He gave all his work away and the distributions on 8" floppies spanned several disks, all his work. 'The Cathedral and the Bassar' (probably misspelt) by Erik Raymond is the only publication I know of that directly address computer culture. It covers about 1985 to the present but focuses on the open source community only. Good luck Tom
A History of Computing Technology
by Michael R. Williams
2nd edition (March 1997)
IEEE Computer Society; ISBN: 0818677392
I'm sure other universities offer similar courses. Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to; build on the work of others. Good luck!
Mark Gregory
Nearly every programming book by tannembaum has a brief history of computer science in it..
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I was watching cable documentary, and they said that the AZTECS discovered zer0 long before Indians and Arabs. You might want to check into that. Ancient heiroglyphs are cool!
;)
For fun you could read _The_Difference_Engine_ by Gibson. Happy researching. Please tell us all before you publish
rohit
If there is anything you can be certain of is that the evolution of computer technology got off track of pure and genuine science of computing, otherwse we would not be today suffering from an apparent inability to solve the "software crisis".
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
This article is a reference you may miss.
For all the information you could want on Zero.. check out "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife. It covers zero from the very begining up until its use today in quantum physics.. Good read.. only about 200 pages or so..
A point of reference that might help is a class I participated in at Old Dominion University called computers and society (CS 300U). It covered the history of computting (but to a lesser degree than you are proposing) and how computers impact society. If you would like to check the page out it can be found Here . I found the course fairly comprehensive even coverring operation Sundevil ( I remember having to hide my pirated apple ][ software for that one) and other items of hacker/computer note.
Good jumping off point for developing the class you are researching.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
My college has some courses similar to that which you mention, and believe it or not, it's a part of the history department...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Not that that's a comprehensive list or necessarily a good organizational conceit, but from an end-user perspective, it's what's important. (A caveat: the "end-users" of punchcard systems and such were very unlikely not to be techies.) This is, as usual, the lesson that some of the Slashdot crowd would do well to learn from Apple: not everyone cares what's under the skin of their computing environment. Not everyone knows or wants to know or needs to know.
Steven Johnson, founder of Feed, has an excellent book, Interface Culture, which details the progression of computer interfaces and turns a critical eye on their cultural and psychological implications.
I'm reading this book now for a seminar on human-computer interaction, but it's just as applicable to the sort of course you're proposing. What I particularly like is its focus not just on the development of GUIs but also on the power of textual and hypertextual interfaces, which honestly are the only popular interface innovation of the last decade or so, since the desktop-metaphor GUIs have stagnated.
Good luck with your syllabus. Count me among the folks who would like to see what you come up with. (For the record, I really like the idea of teaching about the history of computer science problem-solving (i.e., NP complete problems, number systems, etc)
Andrew
For a development so recent, there is considerable controvery over some basic details. For instance, consider GUI. Popular folklore attributes it to Parc, followed by Apple. But there is another viewpoint, the almost forgotten Engelbart. It's amazing that with all the people involved in these inventions still alive today, nobody quite agrees on who invented what. It's another matter trying to figure out who invented the first computer. I can't imagine what it will be like in a hundred years, when people look up contradictory records postulating various different accounts. Good luck trying to piece it together.
As for older theoretical subjects, one book you'll find invaluable is Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, in which he painstakingly traces back the history of various mathematical and computational developments.
Who invented the zero?
w/m
Check out Robert Kaplan's "The Nothing That Is - A natural history of zero" It pretty much covers everything about zero from Sumerians to binaries to getting all the naturals from empty sets ala Neumann - and it's done with style and wit. Some equations but nothing that can't be understood with highschool algebra.
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
The history of computers (etc.) is quite simple:
First Al and Bill invented the computer.
Then Bill invented Software.
Lastly Al invented the Internet.
How lucky we are. They took times out their busy schedules to do this.
This may help - "The History of Hacking", a presentation I did a couple of years ago. If nothing else, it will help tie things together ;-)
http://www.gilliss.com/presentations.html
Jim Tomayko has taught an undergraduate course as an elective in the CS curriculum at Carnegie Mellon University (which I didn't take, but I've heard good things about). My quick web search for more info about the course came up empty, but you might be able to contact him directly for advice.
in US History similair to this. Yeah !
When I was studying there, Warwick University ran a similar course. I think it was only 10 week, but if they still run it they should have a summary on the web.
Many of the students found this quite challenging and a bit overwhelming. I had a bit more background and so could place many items into a pre-existing framework of knowledge. I found the course very interesting and very much appreciated the context it provided to topics addressed elsewhere in isolation.
Regarding your goal, I see it as a good thing. I also support the idea of offering it to those with some prior classwork and experience under their belts. Too many people I meet these days don't have sufficient understanding of the context in which they work and create. The ranks of the old "gurus" is thinning, and their stories and hard-won knowledge are becoming scarcer. I believe giving current students some knowledge of what has come before is a good thing.
The "early days" also produced a sense of community that should be remembered. (Note that this happens in many fields, not just information systems or whatever you call it.) I recall getting a new editor on the school VAX just by asking and by being willing to "sneakernet" a tape from someone's employer. They were happy to see it used. With all the "business" going on these days, it's nice to remember the generous spirit of some of those who contributed so much to getting us where we are, now. And who found facination in the topics themselves, regardless of their financial worth.
As for books and such, I can recommend:
The Hacker's Guide, 3rd ed. -- The Jargon File plus a bit, stamped on a dead tree.
Where the Wizard's Stay Up Late -- the birth of ARPANET and subsequent things.
Don Knuth's writings. Aside from being thorough, he's informative and funny.
Good luck!
I highly recommend looking at the MIT STS.035 syllabus. I took this class and loved it. STS.034, a complementary class, covers the prehistory of computing. Check the MIT Course Catalog to get in touch with the professor who's teaching it next term.
If you look hard enough, you should be able to develop a class. I know the big subjects should be 1) early computing (i.e. ENIAC and the like) 2) Xerox PARC and the early Net 3) Early hacking and how it developed the modern PC culture and 4) The current underground scene, where I cut my teeth. If you cover those 4 subheadings well, the rest will sort itself out.
Life takes it's toll...please have exact change.
First, two references:
Scott Muller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs Its first chapter is 'Personal Computer Background' which i find quite interesting. I think it provides good background to non-technical people in your audience.
Byte Magazine : My favourite geek magazine when i was younger... They have this 20th aniversary edition that talks about "modern" history of PC era.
You could safely ignore what i am going to say...
A. You forgot to mention Alan Turing! How dare you... well i am sure you know about him, just forget to mention it on your post. But now you witness first hand some slashdot steam...
B. What's your audience? As one slashdotter already said, different audiences would require different kinds of materials and presention.
C. What would be different if computer literacy programs are being taught to average North American Highschoolers?
D. If i were one of your students, i would be interested in:
History of Computer Cultures (IBM, PDP, LISP, AI, MIT Vs Stanford Vs Oxford, Atari, Commodore, Mac vs MS,...)
History of impact on society (WWII, business -- COBOL, scientists, PC in offices, Internet...)
History of computation (Hilbert, Russell, Godel, Church, Turing...)
History of Computer Hareware (mainframe,minicomputer,PCs,networked computer)
History of Electronics (Vacuum,transitters,ICs,microprocessor...) (Is it highschool stuff?)
And, impact/restrains of Von Neumann machines -- sequential vs parallel, program ?= data...
All in 16 weeks!
Good luck...
Ricky
Hey, don't limit yourself to lecturing. If you want people to get the feel for the history of computing, have them experience it. Get yourself some vintage hardware or some emulators. Actually have the students write programs on punch cards. Have them struggle against the 3583 bytes total memory of a VIC-20. Have them flipping switches on a little box with lights and nothing else. Have them write in assembler, or better, machine language. Nothing too complicated, of course, but then they will appreciate the real progress of computers -- "You mean somebody actually worked like this every day for years?"
-----------
-----------
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack
Along these lines, how about The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling? Even though this book is not the greatest read, the hypothetical situation of the story could be interesting to a computer history class.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Take a look at this historical progression on one of the BUNCH, NCR. You can see how general purpose computing arrives on the scene in a context of transaction-specific machines (eg., cash registers).
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
This is a massive undertaking for me, in part because I have so much research to do to simply select the points that are best suited for a 16 week course. Has anyone ever taken a course such as this, heard of such a course, or know anyone who has taught the course?
/.'ers from around the world to do your work for you.
Sorry buddy, but it sounds to me like you're trying to get
[Cheap shot I know, but hey... - Good luck]
Look there, and you will be rewarded.
There is also a presentation about Seymore Cray available on line that is fairly interesting. Check out that baby on slide 16. I used to work on that thing. WooHoo!
--
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
Here's some perspective for you, looser:
If it wasn't liquid cooled, you havn't done shit.
If you've never booted from paper tape, you havn't done shit.
If you've never done trouble shooting with an osciliscope, you havn't done shit.
If you've never done field repair with a soldering iron and a paper clip, you havn't done shit.
If you you've never untangled a fouled 9-track transport, you havn't done shit.
If you've never done work on computers with no IC's or keyboards, you havn't done shit.
In short, you are absolutely representative of the
You're just as big an idiot posure as the rest of the moronators.
--
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
A lot of info can be found in the history of cryptograph litterature. Many of the pinoeers of pre-digital computing were also into cryptography, Babbage broke the Vinegre cipher, Turing brok Ultra etc.
I would not spend more than one week on the pre-machine computing era but the idea that choosing the representation is the key to making systems computable is important. Place-value systems are important because they make the abacus possible
On the invention of the electronic computer there are a bunch of competing claims. Before WWII Konrad Zues built the Z1 and Z2 computers which were the first programmable electronic devices to be built and working. The Bletchley park systems were the first major electronic computational devices - although programability was limited.
You could also look at Feynman's biography where he describes the computer facility of the Manhattan project, they used tabulators for computation. [Kind of brings into questioon the effectiveness of ITAR restrictions on 'supercomputers' to 'stop rogue nations building nuclear devices' eh?]
After that it depends on whether you read a UK or US history. Both tend to imply that the other groups didn't exist - although in practice they were often collaborating. Manchester tends to be ignored in the US histories, as for that matter is the fact that the US was nowhere near dominant in computing until comparatively recently.
There is quite a bit of computer history in the book 'Big Blue' which is a biography of IBM written by the anti-trust investigator who tried to break them up.
Another era not to forget is the Micro-vs-Mainframe fight. Again the real action here was in Europe where manufacturers were building $100 computers aimed at the consumer market that sold in millions. Sinclair outsold PET, Apple and Tandy put together in those days. A lot of that was driven by the video-game scene
There are a bunch of books arround like Where the Wizards stay up late, architects of the web etc. However beware that many of these were written as corporate PR puff pieces. 'Wizards' is mainly an account of the BBN view of the Internet. 'Architects of the Web' is a hard core haigography of Marc Andressen written by the Netscape PR firm, Tim Berners-Lee is mentioned only in passing to explain how he got everything wrong. It was an attempt to rewrite history with Marc as the sole inventor of the Web.
A lot of the other computer histories tend to fit in the same mould.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
There is certainly no shortage of culture nor material (look at the culture of Slashdot).
While I've never taken a CS history course, some introductory courses I have taken have included a short history of the topic. Starting with the representation of calculating with many rows of switches, to base four, to finally the binary system and stored procedures.
There are plenty of books out there about the history of the subject, and there probably has been a documentary.
Anyway, it's certainly possible, although I would question its extreme usefulness as the field changes to rapidly that what was only 10 years old sometimes has little to do with how things work today. And that's not taking into account how technical the field is and how less and less theory is being taught today. Increase the years and you increase the contrast. For example, a mechanical calculating machine has little to do with an electronic computer of today, and it may be difficult for some of your students to realize the connection.
While it's definitely useful to know the true roots of computing, I would question if this couldn't simply be learned by a course in standard computational theory using mathematical models?
Of course, our goals could be different. "A history course is always useful."
Um, the zero was invented by the Indian astronomer Aryabhatta around 700BC. It was taken up by the Arabs from India, and from the Arabs by Europeans sometime later.
-Shaunak.
I stand corrected - I should have said "The first written (recorded) use of the zero was made by Aryabhatta around 700 BC - it was probably discovered in India earlier.
-Shaunak.
I think you have the makings of a great course, but you might want to consider looking at some of the wider implications of computers for society/culture in general since the evolution of the modern digitial computer in World War II. Let's face it, computers are neck-and-neck for the most important technology to emerge from that war (nuclear weapons and power being the other, duh.).
Over time popular (muggle, non-geek, luser, take your pick) perceptions of computers have evolved from awe to fear-and-loathing to present attitudes which combine lack of comprehension with daily requirements for use in a way those in support departments regret every day....
A couple random nuggets to think about: During the 1964 Free Speech Movement, people carried signs and what not saying "I am a Human Being. Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate" as a rip against the punch cards being used for student admin.
There was a movie Tracy-Hepburn movie about computers being introduced as a replacement for a librarian....
Actually, this would be an interesting course all on it's own....Popular images of the Computer....any other ideas for materials?
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
And it failed horribly. But then, she's a nitwit, and had to read her lecture out of the textbook. Just don't go down the same road she did; make it interesting!
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Don't forget dead trees. Your students - and everyone who's serious about programming - should read the history of numbers, and that's in books. There were a spate around the Millennithingy, due to wierdnesses in publishers' conceptions of the world.
Probably the better of these is Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. Charles Seife's Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea will give students a hand up in understanding how journalists misunderstand the issues. Your students should read both. And definitely John D Barrow's The Book of Nothing : Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas About the Origins of the Universe.
Even better, throw them in the deep end with Barrow's Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits (1999).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I once read a book what was it called again? Ah yes, I remember now. FIRE IN THE VALLEY. It discusses all of the ideas you were mentioning and more. It's a great cover story of the making of the personal computer. From PDP to Altair to Apple and all that other stuff in between and before and after. It doesn't talk about how things were assembled, but it gave a good idea of the market for personal computers in the late seventies and how it all started.
One thing i think you need to put a lot of thought into, is just how much time you want to spend talking about all this fascinating tech Vs how this stuff has affected peoples lives. IMO i think the social aspect is at least as important as the actual developments.
I'm sorry you feel that I don't know the subject matter already. My question on /. was a simple one, it was only a request for comment and further information. I will fully agree that I do not know the history of computers in its totality, however, I post this question with over two years of research time ahead of me in order to properly acquaint myself with the majority of the content matter. I know of no person that has undertaken a research project because he/she already knows the material, that would be redundant. Knowing what I have learned to date has given me cause to look seriously at taking what I can learn about the subject matter and passing it on to fellow students in the field. I understand that my question as posted may seem very basic and naive, but it is a very logical question when doing research of this kind. After perusing all the syllabi and text lists that have accumulated here and in email, you can be certain that I will have a job to do in reviewing those texts and compiling the information contained within them. It also goes without saying that I will try my best to conduct interviews with those who have helped create the future in the field and use that "fresh" material in my project. I too have worked on many of the systems you have mentioned, but just using those systems is not the focus of my research. The creation of systems and the acceptance of those systems and views by large groups of people are the key elements of my research. This is a vast undertaking that I am willing to persue on my own, however, I thought I could use the collective knowledge of those willing to give their input and knowledge to my advantage. Why else would the internet have been created in the first place?
/. community because of this post, I believe that I can continue my research and provide a unique learning experience to those that wish to become involved.
I have never claimed to be a professional teacher, nor will I ever. But I do know this: given the resounding confidence and exuberance found in the
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I think I'll call this one Bob.
Live with Love for Love is Life. --mine.
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I think I'll call this one Bob.
Live with Love for Love is Life. --mine.
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Although others worked on analog and decimal computers (e.g. Zuse in Germany), Turing was clearly far ahead of all other early "computer scientists". For example, he recognized that binary systems are more efficient than decimal. Also, his mathematical work is now very important for all of computer science and mathematics.
Although this is mainly a bio of Turing and his contribution to breaking german codes, it is significant for the history of computers. Compared to german and american "competitors", he was clearly far ahead. Turing was instrumental both to the theory and the implementation of binary electronic computers. Therefore his bio is so important. War is still the father of of technological advancement !
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/bio/part5.html
I agree that without Enigma Britian might have been invaded, but would that have meant that Hitler would have won ? The yanks were already designing intercontinental bombers for their nukes, in case Britain would fall.
"table of natural logarithmns for arugements between zero and five to sixteen decimal places" or any similar book. make sure it is good and thick. bring it to class if you hit the topic. it drives the point about the value of computers home very nicely.
"the day the universe changed" by james burke. saw the tv adaptation years ago. all i remember abut it right now is that it covered the dark ages, reneisance, american colonies period of time. and that there were a couple of episodes/chapters about the reintroduction of math into medival eruope.
check the book review section of scientific american.
aliens studying at our universities. they must be arts students.
Computer Architecture : A Quantitative Approach by John Hennessy, John L. Hennessy, David Goldberg, David A. Patterson Morgan Kaufmann Publishers; ISBN: 1558603298
This is mainly intended for studies of computer architectures and instruction sets, but goes into a fair amount of detail with additional reading suggestions on the history of the computer. It covers from early computers all the way up to the most recent (Pentium series). It is primarily devoted to teaching computer architecture using the MIPS instruction set, but has rich information throughout on practical aspects of computing, evolution of Intel's dominance in the PC chip market, downfalls of some of the many forgotten companies that were early innovators (and computing giants for that matter), evaluation benchmarks, comparisons between Intel and Motorola processors. The list goes on and I have only read up to chapter 6. I highly recommend looking at this as part if you can find it in a library. Otherwise it is fairly pricey...but it keeps on giving. Pretty light on the culture side though.
Other than that, I don't think that this class would be complete without the introduction to Moore's law and its predictive assertions as to the future of computing. His original paper is a good start.
Cramming more components onto integrated circuits
Gordon E. MooreElectronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965
Lastly, some mention of the current efforts being made to surpass the limitations observed by Moore's law in the fields of nanotechnology and molecular computing may be worthy.
It would be quite easy to construct an entire course (as per many of the replies here) purely on the history of computers as machines and tools, detailing the evolution of the mathematics, electronics, semi-conductors and programs. However given your topic of the History and Culture of Computing, this is surely not adequate by itself. Furthermore this leads to asking what you mean by 'Culture of Computing'. Are you intending to cover the culture of programming [and its twisted humour], the culture [and male domination] of the lab (or tutorial room...), the digital or online culture, the effect of computers on broader society.. etc. All of which and more are quite valid but reasonably distinct. It may be worth considering what you actually aim to cover in that respect.. or you could just sum it computing culture by harvesting the emails of all people taking the course and sending them several meg of hardcore pornography a day for a month...
-- include std.sig
The question really is what you will put in your course. I mean there is plenty of info on computers and such. The hard part I think will be what to put and what to not to put in. My question is will you take about Crypto? If you are, here are 2 great books: Crypto by Steven Levy and Codebreakers by David Kahn. You might of seen the book review of Crypto on Slashdot but I dont think Codebreakers has been featured in a Slashdot book review.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
I think that your topic might be a little to broad. Have you considered chosing one of the many smaller topics that other posters have suggested? You could spend an entire year teaching about computer games alone, and not even get into programming, or hardware, etc. History and Culture of Computing is as broad a topic as "History and Culture of the Automobile."
Today is a good day to die. They all are, though.
except that you forgot that xerox wasnt the one responsible for giving DOS to bill gates it was the QDOS guy who derived QDOS from CPM and it was xerox that was responsible for the gui demo taht got gates and jobs nutso about the gui thing. not withstanding the 1968 guy who already invented the mouse/gui combo even b4 xerox...
I see a bunch of you waiting to jump on the bandwagon "yeah yeah i wannaaa take that course". Here you have a bandwagon created by someone who knows so little about the subject that they have asked the question on /. "where can i find this info". This is my pet peave. UNI courses created by people who dont know the subject matter already. I once had to take an intro to computers course at a tech school as a prerequesite to some coding courses. The teacher told me blantently, "I dont have to know anything about computers. I'm just here to do my job whatever it is they tell me to do." It was true. She knew nothing about computers. It was a daily task. At one point in the course she was to explain hexidecimal and binary number systems. When it came down to the wire, I had to explain to her and the class how counting in hex works because in essence, people take base 10 for granted while never understanding what baseX really means. That is to start at 0 counting to the last digit and moving to the next place repeating the 0 to last digit count....so you could count in hex as easily as you could count in base 10. She was the teacher in this class. yet she knew nothing about the material and in fact had no interest in it.
My friend, a year is not enough. If you have lived the history of modern computing as I have, if you have coded on a C64, an Apple][, a coco, an IBM-PC(8088), XT(8088) AT(286) 386 486 Pentium/II/III, watched Gates rise to power sen the internet from a telnet shell, irc from a printer/kb terminal, bbs'd at 300baud on up to 56k ppp dialups and finally to dsl anda modern ethernet based internet, you have lived slept eaten and breathed the history of comptures and love them as if they were sentient.....then perhaps you would not be asking such a question "where do i find this info". Why are you teaching this course? I dont want to be mean about it, but its exactly this sort of thing that we are dealing with here that causes the acute stagnation of the industry's development that we now have. M$ is not innovation. Ask Gates and he will tell you that it is. Ask me and I will tell you that I have lived it from the beginning when M$ was nobody. From when the PC was just being conceived. I ate the history. I dont have to ask where to get it. It's all over the net.
Ask yourself again why you are doing this. Ask if your contribution is stagnation or innovation. Ask yourself if you are doing this to keep your job or if you should even keep your job. Ask yourself if you are contributing to the output of misguided computer industry people that we are now producing.
Does everyone still want to jump on the M$ band wagon or learn from ppl who do not know? Or would you rather learn from ppl who love and breath the machinery we work on and truly know the history?
I am not a Dr., but I do know when I'm sick enough to go see one and I am smart enough to know when he's double talking me. Also, I am not a professional teacher but I do knwo this:
Teach what you know. Leave the teaching of what you do not know to those who DO know.
I enjoyed this book immensely when I read it in the early 90's It has a great history of computing from its origin up to the mid 1980's, as well as biographical information on some of the developers and contributors to what we now call computing. There is a revised edition available from MIT PRESS (http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=026268 1153) or, an online version at http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/
Yep, it's still being taught that ENIAC was the first electronic digital computer. But it was John Atansoff and his grad student assistant Clifford Berry that *really* invented it at the University of Iowa around 1940. WW-II ultimately interrupted the work, thus robbing Atanasoff-Berry of their deserved credit. It was all finally set straight in a court ruling in 1973...