IT History Society

Ever get the urge to mess with Visicalc or WordStar again? Play the original Donkey Kong or Adventure on your computer? Now you can! The Internet Archive , in a Christmas gift to the world, has unleashed the Historical Software Archive , a collection of prominent and historically notable pieces of software that you can run in your browser. They...

The United Kingdom has finally pardoned Alan Turing for a gay sex conviction which tarnished the brilliant career of the code breaker credited with helping win the war against Nazi Germany and laying the foundation for the computer age. Turing’s contributions to science spanned from computer science to biology, but he’s perhaps best remembered as the architect of the effort...

Computer visionary Doug Englebart was posthumously honored on December 9th at the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mt View, CA. The date of this event was significant, because December 9 was the 45th Anniversary of the “Mother of All Demos.^” Doug's wife, daughter, and several people that worked with Doug or knew of his work made brief speeches to honor...

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...