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Sep 20, 2015: Deep LA Conference at The Huntington I’ll be presenting a paper at the “Deep L.A.” graduate history conference taking place at The Huntington on October 3rd. The conference is sponsored …
Sep 19, 2015: The Census Has Always Been "Big Data" The Census has always been “Big Data,” with or without computers and the automation of information. Census and Sensibility: A Little History of Big …
Sep 18, 2015: Digital Imaginaries at AoIR Something tells me I should have applied to the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference this year – the theme is “Digital Imaginaries.” …
Aug 11, 2015: People Working in Computer Room As part of my dissertation I’m working with the Southern California Edison Photographs and Negatives collection at the Huntington Library. The …
Aug 8, 2015: Univac 494 marketing photographs I came across this Univac photograph online, showing three people working in a computer room. Using a reverse Google Image Search, it appears that …
Mar 28, 2015: Finding the Death of the Mainframe Stewart Alsop, editor for Infoworld magazine in the 1990s eating his words, "Death to the Mainframe," 2001 (Computer History Museum) I came across a …
Mar 27, 2015: We Don't See Mainframes as Legacy Technology Half-century milestone for IBM mainframes, by Mark Ward at BBC News (April 7th, 2014) IBM System/360 Model 65 Computer, 1965 (image via Computer …
Mar 27, 2015: IBM System/360 - 50th anniversary IBM recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the System/360 mainframe, which was announced on April 7, 1964. IBM press announcement text for the …
Mar 26, 2015: Grace Hopper documentary - "The Queen of Code" The Queen of Code at FiveThirtyEight https://youtu.be/Qwwf866Cfdg (no longer available) Also, an interview with the director of the short film at NPR, …
Mar 7, 2015: Just a Little Acronym We Thought Up xkcd comic on Douglas Engelbart and the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968 http://xkcd.com/1234/ The video below is the “Mother of All Demos” at the …
Mar 5, 2015: 5 MB of Data on 62,500 Punched Cards “Programmer standing beside punched cards” “This stack of 62,500 punched cards — 5 MB worth — held the control program for the giant SAGE military …
Mar 3, 2015: Punch Card Jam Needs Some Force In 2010, representatives from the Computer History Museum visited a company in Texas still using an IBM 402 mainframe for everyday accounting jobs: …
Feb 25, 2015: Mainframes are so 50 years ago I came across this tweet as an advertisement in my own Twitter feed. It’s meant to be ironic, mainframes are still around, it’s more so the way …
Feb 23, 2015: Computers Never Lie About Love “Comput-Her Baby” - a short film by Dave Goldson and Neal Chastain, 1968 A satire on computer dating and matchmaking. The song “Strangers in the …
Feb 19, 2015: The Machine That Changed the World - video series Thanks to Andy Baio, all five parts of The Machine That Changed the World are available online: …
Feb 17, 2015: The Holmdel Computer Center - Part 2 The Holmdel Computer Center, Part 2 – AT&T Archives (original link). Alternate link at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. This rare look inside a …
Feb 17, 2015: The Holmdel Computer Center - AT&T archives There’s some interesting artwork on the timeshare computer…reminds me of the “nose art” on military aircraft. In my archival research I’ve come across …
Feb 14, 2015: Control Data Cyber 170 mainframes Two Control Data Cyber 170 mainframe computers, side by side – one online, and one as a spare. (Photograph via Library of Congress) SITE BUILDING 002 …
Feb 13, 2015: Careers and digital lifespans Campus digital workhorse running final laps after 35 years (Wayback Machine link), by Barbara Palmer, Stanford Report, 2003. The remarkable thing is …
Feb 13, 2015: It was physically demanding labor Hello, Goodbye - CDS Bids Farewell to Mainframe, Ushers in New Beginning In 1998 the Catalog Distribution Service of the Library of Congress shutoff …
Feb 12, 2015: UCLA Differential Analyzer - 1948 film UCLA’s 1948 Mechanical Computer Was Simply Gorgeous To Watch in Action (Wayback Machine link), by Matt Novak at Paleofuture, 2013. I’ll need to get …
Feb 11, 2015: Files and Folders Before Computers Filing Cabinets, a Neglected Piece of Business History, by Linda Gross, the Hagley Library: Dr. Robertson is an associate professor of media history …
Feb 10, 2015: Matthew Kirschenbaum - Track Changes Kirschenbaum’s Tumblr blog on his book project - http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Literary History of Word Processing, …
Feb 10, 2015: Gladwell on the Social Life of Paper [caption id=“attachment_37” align=“alignright” width=“340”] Paper strips shown at faa.gov[/caption] Malcolm Gladwell’s 2002 article on paperwork at …
Feb 9, 2015: Q & A with Craig Robertson on The Passport in America Craig Robertson, by Christopher Klein at the Boston Globe The assumption behind the system set up after World War I was that you needed an identity …
Feb 9, 2015: Paperwork Studies as an Historical Field The Paper Trail Through History, by Jennifer Schuessler, the New York Times: Ms. Gitelman’s argument may seem like an odd lens on familiar history. …
Feb 8, 2015: Project poster and talk last October Last October I gave a “brown bag” talk over lunch in the History Department Library at the University of California, Riverside. I spoke for about 40 …
Feb 8, 2015: Paperwork Explosion This video created by Jim Henson in 1967 for IBM makes a great first post. So much anxiety, so little time, if only there was someone to help…like …