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Showing 102 articles
May 5, 2008
Science Fiction, Science Fact, and the Future of Computing
Last February I had the privilege of attending a conference on “Imagining Outer Space,” held in Bielefeld, Germany. I have been to many conferences on the history of rocketry and space travel, and on the social and cultural implications of the Space Age, but none of them were as stimulating as this...
April 16, 2008
What we don't know
An obituary in a recent Washington Post brought back a flood of memories for me, and reminded me of a topic I had been meaning to discuss but had put aside. Samuel S. Snyder is a name that should be familiar to many historians of computing—he authored an article on “Computer Advances Pioneered by...
April 4, 2008
"Cybernetics is the Universal Solvent of Technology"
Those words were spoken by the late Professor W. David Lewis, of Auburn University, discussing a talk I had given about the relationship of computing to aerospace. We all know the corollary: if you discover a universal solvent, in what container can you hold it? For myself, working at the National...
March 26, 2008
Moore's Law, Steve Case, and YouTube
Moore’s Law is an empirical observation—that the density of computer memory chips doubles about every 18 months, and it has been doing so for the past four decades. Magnetic storage capacity, and to a less-regular extent, processor speeds and telecommunications bandwidth have also been increasing...
March 10, 2008
An Alternative Universe
Within the past decade, the cell phone has spread around the world. The iPod is a permanent appendage to teen-agers, while the Blackberry plays the same role for "grown-ups." All these, of course, are based on the microprocessor, whose architecture in turn is based on computer designs that go back...
February 25, 2008
Introduction
At first I assumed that everyone out there knows who I am, but perhaps I had better introduce myself. I am Paul Ceruzzi, Curator of Aerospace Computing and Electronics at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. My interests in the history of computing go back to my...