Henry S. Tropp

Computer report VII: The effervescent years: A retrospective: Behind the computer revolution lay the vision and perseverance of a handful of pioneers committed to open information exchange

Reviews the history of electronic computers.

The Smithsonian Computer History Project and Some Personal Recollections

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview on the Smithsonian computer history project and other personal recollections of the author. The project at the Smithsonian originated with a contract signed by the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) and the Smithsonians National Museum of History and Technology (NMHT) in 1967. Cuthbert Hurd, Isaac Auerbach, and Walter Carlson were three of the individuals who conceived the importance of Preserving the History of Computing . The chapter presents the possibility of mechanizing sequential series of calculations, checks, and procedures in a binary code resulted in a complex calculated named Bell Labs MODEL I.

The 20th Anniversary Meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery: 30 August 1967

In 1967, a gathering of computer pioneers was held in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This article presents an edited version of a recorded transcript of that meeting. It contains, in addition to many interesting anecdotes, a great deal of fascinating commentary on the attitudes of these pioneers toward the work in which they were engaged and toward the fruits that had been produced from those labors in the succeeding 20 years.

Kenneth O. May, 1915–1977: His early life to 1946

Abstract Kenneth Ownsworth May graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1936 with highest honors in mathematics. The following year he received his Masters degree and became a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, and during the next two years he traveled to England, Europe, and Russia. On his return to the United States he became active in the Communist Party, the consequences of which would plague him for years. He joined the United States Army in 1942, serving with distinction, and after the war returned to Berkeley, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1946. He immediately accepted an assistant professorship at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, later moving to the University of Toronto. This part of Mays biography focuses on the events up to his accepting a position at Carleton College. In this early phase his openness, his emphasis on good communications in the process of education, and his interest in practical procedures emerge which later set the background for his successful career as a leading historian of mathematics and the founding editor of Historia Mathematica.

SAGE at North Bay

The author gives an account of his trip to the NORAD site at North Bay, Ontario, Canada.