A Sell Out/SRO crowd of over  400 people attended an outstanding Computer History Museum (CHM) talk by Ken Segall, author of the book, Insanely Simple:  The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success.   Mr. Segall was interviewed by Harry McCracken of Time magazine about his experiences with Steve Jobs and other executives at Apple.  Mr.

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 invent the mainframe, Sun the workstation or Apple† the PC, but all nonetheless became market leaders.

I listened to a radio program on the subject of trap streets. Fictitious streets, towns and other pieces of geography added to a map made copying detectable, since if the other map had been independently created it could not contain these inventions, a trap. This phenomenon has come into sharp relief because of the rise of computer map systems, either on the web or through satellite based navigation systems (GPS) that have put the details of maps under more scrutiny and daily use.

The Computer History Museum recently hosted a forum with John Gertner, the author of a new book about Bell Labs. Here is the link.

Gertner discusses the many world-changing inventions and innovations that came out of the Labs, especially during its peak years of innovation from the late 1920s through the 1980s.

PC World recently ran an interesting piece about vintage DP equipment still being used on a daily basis, for practical purposes. They even found someone using punched card accounting equipment.

By now you must know that I am fond of historic plaques, especially ones that have to do with the District of Columbia or Northern Virginia. Here's another one, from Arlington: The full text reads:

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.)

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.

“Programming” (and programming support) was an old data processing concept that originally was broadly defined as the adaptation of general-purpose devices to specific tasks.  Programming therefore goes back to Herman Hollerith wiring and rewiring (programming) his equipment to handle specific jobs.  By the early 1930s IBM was distributing information about novel (for the time) plugboard wiring diagrams to customers via a publication called Pointers.  Some of these diagrams were created by IBMers, but more importantly, many were created by customers who were willing to share their