Articles
Showing 5 articles by Joel West
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...
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...
February 24, 2011
Ken Olsen and his once-great company
Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, died Feb. 6. While most millennials would say “who?” those with a little more perspective will remember him as one of the most significant business leaders and entrepreneurs of 20th century computer history. DEC invented the minicomputer,...
December 1, 2010
Greatest computing inventions of all time?
The 25th anniversary of Invention & Technology (from American Heritage) is marked by a list of the “top twenty five revolutionary inventions in the United States.” At least that is how it’s reported by IT economist (and sometime historian) Shane Greenstein in his blog, Virulent Word of Mouse. (I...