Blog

There was a fire at the Internet Archive’s San Francisco scanning center recently. The good news is that no one was hurt and no data was lost. Their main building wasn't affected except for damage to one electrical run which caused them to lose power to some servers for a while. The San Francisco Fire Department was fast and great...

The History of Science Society held its annual meeting two weeks ago (November 21st to November 24th) in Boston MA. The meeting celebrated among other things the centenary of the journal Isis , the organ around which the society was eventually formed. The meeting covered a broad range of topics in the history of science from all historical periods ancient...

LEO, more formally known as Lyons Electronic Office, was the world's first business computer, having been developed by the British company J. Lyons & Co. Ltd. between 1947-1954. John Simmons was very much the genius behind this adventure into business process re-engineering. His papers are archived at the Modern Record Centre at Warwick University in Coventry, England. Many of these...

The event was in the form of an interview/conversation led by CHM CEO/moderator John Hollar. Mr. Rattner spent a lot of time discussing his early life at Hollywood High School and how he got involved in electronics and as a EE student at Cornell University. It was less about Intel's early history. However, here are a few quick takes on...

In November 1943, an electrical engineer working in the telecommunications department of Britain's General Post Office named Tommy Flowers designed and built the world’s first programmable computer. Named "Colossus," the thermionic tube-based programmable computer successfully broke the supposedly unbreakable Lorenz cipher used by Hitler and the German High Command during the Second World War. Afterward, Flowers had a long, successful...

This was a hugely succcessful panel session on Intel's transitions, twists and turns into the world's most successful semiconductor company of all time. Many attendees complemented our 2 panelists and myself for a great learning experience and intellectually stimulating session. The great stories told by Ted and Dave is what tech history should be all about, IMHO! It was certainly...

Panelists: Ted Hoff, Intel (1968-1983) Dave House, Honeywell (Intel customer) and Intel (1974-1996) Moderator : Alan J Weissberger, IEEE ComSoc Abstract: This panel discussion, featuring semiconductor industry luminaries Ted Hoff and Dave House, will examine how Intel was able to succeed and dominate the semiconductor memory and (later) the microprocessor markets. The panelists will cover Intel's history from 1968 to...

A free session at the Flash Memory Summit- Aug 12-15, 2013 at Santa Clara Convention Center: Fireside Chat with Ted Hoff : organized by IEEE COMSOC content manager Alan J Weissberger, the session will be on Thursday from 9:50am to 10:50am. Ted Hoff is co-inventor of the microprocessor and an early semiconductor memory design and applications engineer. Ted will share...

Almost two weeks ago I was at the 24th International Congress for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (iCHSTM) in Manchester, England. At more than 1700 registered participants it may have been the largest gathering devoted to the history of science, technolgoy and medicine ever. The week long conference saw more than 1300 hundred talks organized into more than...

Abstract Who Invented the Computer? Unfortunately for those of us who would like history to be heroic and uncomplicated, there isn't a simple answer. This talk will identify the likely suspects and describe what they did and didn't do to contribute to the invention of the computer. It's a story of dreams and disappointments, of successes and failures, of big...