Grace Hopper documentary - "The Queen of Code"
The Queen of Code at FiveThirtyEight (Wayback Machine link)
(YouTube video no longer available)
Also, an interview with the director of the short film at NPR, on All Tech Considered: Grace Hopper, ‘The Queen Of Code,’ Would Have Hated That Title
The moth, or first computer “bug” mentioned in the video and audio above.
There’s also a Grace Hopper GitHub sticker (shown below) called the “Gracehoptocat.” The sticker was given out at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (Wayback Machine link).
(Revised and republished April 1st, 2025)
Teacher-Facilitators
The Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher, by Michael Godsy at The Atlantic (2015):
There is a profound difference between a local expert teacher using the Internet and all its resources to supplement and improve his or her lessons, and a teacher facilitating the educational plans of massive organizations.
The article makes some interesting points, and it applies beyond K-12 also. The name of the article in the title bar is "When the Computer Takes Over for the Teacher," which seems a better fit for the story. It's also not just about computers, but a fundamental shift in the way information is created and shared.
(Revised and republished April 12th, 2025)
Creating Digital Professionals
BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme, by Jane Wakefield at BBC News, 2015:
The initiative is part of a wider push to increase digital skills among young people and help to fill the digital skills gap. The UK is facing a significant skills shortage, with 1.4 million "digital professionals" estimated to be needed over the next five years.
Interesting controversy too:
The BBC Micro, launched in the 1980s, played a big role in making computing mainstream but it was not without controversy. The broadcaster's decision to link up with Acorn Computers angered Sir Clive Sinclair as he prepared to launch a rival machine, the ZX Spectrum.
Below, a 1983 advertisement in Interface Age magazine, "The BBC Microcomputer is here!" (via Wikipedia)
(Revised and republished April 23rd, 2025)
Just a Little Acronym We Thought Up
xkcd comic on Douglas Engelbart and the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968
The video below is the “Mother of All Demos” at the Internet Archive
1968 Demo - FJCC Conference Presentation Reel #1 by SRI International
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
It Looks Like 20 Feet
If only I had this when I was still riding ramps!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNL9kuWwFes (video no longer available)
NYTimes on Jim Parsons and Intel advertisements.
How Deep is Your Photography? by Intel (and Jim Parsons)
The three cameras shoot simultaneously, then combine the overlaid information to create an image file that has many more capabilities than a standard JPEG. Once an image is captured, it is processed into a high-quality, depth-mapped file.
“It creates a fat JPEG,” said Erhhung Yuan, system architect and lead developer for Intel RealSense snapshot. “It’s essentially a JPEG with more metadata fields, including the computed depth map.”
The ad is pretty cheesy, but the technology looks interesting. I can see smartphones having more cameras on the backside, and the “fat JPEGS” will require faster processors, more storage, and so on, pushing the limits of the devices even more.
(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)
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 computer network.” ca. 1955 (via the Computer History Museum)
Explaining data storage in a visual way has always been difficult, but especially so with the transition to magnetic tape in the 1950s and 1960s.
Photographs of punched cards help show the enormity of the task at hand, and also the materiality of the information.
5 megabytes of data seems pretty insignificant nowadays, when terabyte hard drives are a common feature in personal computers.
1 TB = 1,000,000 MB (now that would be a lot of punched cards!)
From the Computer History Museum’s online exhibit on Memory and Storage.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
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: http://ibm–1401.info/402.html
“Jam needs SOME force”
“Card Jam Front View”
The article below mentions the CHM trip to Texas, and a few other old computers still in use:
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today, by Benj Edwards at PCWorld, 2012 (Internet Archive: Wayback Machine)
The biggest problem with maintaining such ancient computer systems is that the original technicians who knew how to configure and maintain them have long since retired or passed away, so no one is left with the knowledge required to fix them if they break.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
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 they’re perceived that’s changed.
twitter.com/hpdiscover/status/453556126043615232 (Twitter links no longer available)
The comments are funny too:
@HPDiscover
this is SO not true. Shame on you HP.
#bigdata
— Camila Caldas (@camilaclbcaldas)
April 8, 2014
@HPDiscover
Another one who will eat his words about the death of the Mainframe. Here we go again !!! Have u even watched Matrix ? LOL!! — DD (@Cojinua77)
April 9, 2014
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
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 Night” plays while punched cards are sorted by mainframe computers.
The color in the Vimeo embed below (sadly, no longer available) is a bit off, toward a faded, pinkish hue. The video is available at UC Berkely and UC San Diego, but I’m not sure of the condition of those reels. It’s also listed at the UCLA Film and Television archive in faded condition.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
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: http://waxy.org/2008/06/the_machine_that_changed_the_world/
The Machine That Changed the World is the longest, most comprehensive documentary about the history of computing ever produced, but since its release in 1992, it's become virtually extinct. Out of print and never released online, the only remaining copies are VHS tapes floating around school libraries or in the homes of fans who dubbed the original shows when they aired.
All 5 episodes are (sort of) available on YouTube.
The YouTube videos are blocked now, “on copyright grounds,” but they still play after a moment.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
I Desire to Become Data
Fragments on Machines, a film by Emma Charles
An interesting and very artistic take on the materiality of digital culture, and the physical structures that support modern communication, computation, and data storage. The ventilation covers and shafts in the beginning of the video seem so mundane, but just a few steps inside is an entire world of noise and movement.
My muscle has been replaced by flex and copper. My brain a server. Ones and zeros my voice. I exist as a phantom, an iridescent color. I speak in shimmering tones to the hidden construction of the form. I desire to become data.
(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)
Digital Archaeology at The Deleted City
In an heroic effort to preserve 10 years of collaborative work by 35 million people [Geocities], the Archive Team made a backup of the site just before it shut down. The resulting 650 Gigabyte bit-torrent file is the digital Pompeii that is the subject of an interactive excavation that allows you to wander through an episode of recent online history.
(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)
Outside the Spacecraft - NASM
Outside the Spacecraft, an interactive museum exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. High resolution photographs, insight into curation and preservation techniques, even checklists and paperwork.
The exhibit reminded me of this recent tweet by The Onion:
Otherwise Reasonable Man Sincerely Believes U.S. Landed On Moon: The Onion
(@TheOnion)
February 17, 2015
(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)
Archive Team - Robots.txt is a suicide note
ROBOTS.TXT is a stupid, silly idea in the modern era. Archive Team entirely ignores it and with precisely one exception, everyone else should too.
Archive Team interprets ROBOTS.TXT as damage and temporary madness, and works around it. Everyone should. If you don’t want people to have your data, don’t put it online.
The Holmdel Computer Center - Part 2
The Holmdel Computer Center, Part 2 – AT&T Archives (Wayback Machine link)
This rare look inside a Bell Labs computer center, specifically the one at the Holmdel location, which was referred to internally as the “HOCC” or the “HO CC”. This film was made as orientation for new employees who would need to use the computer center, and this, part 2 of 2 (see part 1), is about the programming center within the HOCC. One thing that’s notable about this film — different from Part 1 — is the preponderance of women working in the Programmer Services area. Around 1966, 7 years before this film was made, there were over 500 women working in “technical work” at Bell Labs, rather than administrative work, and many were in computing. A book and blog by Nathan Ensmenger examines the sociological history of computing, and why during the 1980s the computing field became more and more the province of men. Stories about women in the early decades of computing still reside in the world of the personal anecdote; it’s hard to assess the exact data on how many women worked in the field in the 1960s and 1970s.
The original video isn’t available on the Wayback Machine, but the YouTube version is embedded below.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
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 a few instances of pinup-style material, especially ASCII art printouts.
The video below is from 1973, slightly after the timeframe of my research, but certainly interesting.
The Holmdel Computer Center, Part 1 – AT&T Archives (Wayback Machine link)
The year was 1973, and the computer operating system UNIX, invented at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, had just morphed into its third iteration or improvement, and had just been rewritten in the C programming language. This film, made as an orientation for the computer center at the Bell Labs Holmdel location, is a rare glimpse into the operations and procedures of an early 1970s research-oriented computing center. And as the 1973 Holmdel Computer Center only had IBM computers, it wasn't running a UNIX installation: the system was only ported to IBM computers in the years to come. In 1973, UNIX as a system was limited to installations on DEC computers, and there were UNIX installations at other locations of Bell Laboratories such as Indian Hill, Whippany, and, of course, Murray Hill (where UNIX and C were developed). Computers in the Bell System weren't just relegated to computer science or the development of computer language. They were employed for all kinds of complex engineering calculations, telecommunications applications, and, very occasionally, for making art and music.
The original video isn’t available on the Wayback Machine, but the YouTube version is embedded below.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
Fred Soper - Wikipedia
I happened across an historical US passport for Fred Soper (1893-1977), the American epidemiologist and public health administrator, while doing some research on paperwork. The National Library of Medicine has a page on Fred Soper under their "Profiles in Science" project, but Soper's Wikipedia page is quite lacking (updates have been made since 2015). Updating Wikipedia for this historical figure would make a great project for a History and/or Digital Humanities class. There's also a listing of primary visual sources, with high resolution images.
(Revised and republished April 13th, 2025)
Historical Discourse and Hollywood Films
The Case for Hollywood History, Francine Prose at the New York Review of Books, 2015:
It’s so much easier and less threatening to talk about whether (or how much of) a film is “true” than to confront the unpleasant—and indisputable—truth: that racial and sexual prejudice have persisted so long past the historical eras in which these films are set.
This happens quite often with student essays concerning historical films -- too much attention paid to the factual discrepancies and not enough contemplation of the larger themes. I use films in my research and teaching, they're invaluable for understanding how history has been interpreted in various ways.
One of my favorite clips for 20th Century United States history comes from World War Z. It's the moment when people are being removed from the aircraft carrier and The Charters of Freedom are being brought on board in their place. World War Z is fictional of course, however, the human response to catastrophe, whether caused by zombies or some other force, provides a great starting point for historical discussion.
(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)
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 - SCANNER BUILDING - LOOKING AT DISC STORAGE SYSTEMS A AND B
The year on the photo is listed as 1999, which seems too recent given the feel of the picture. In the high-resolution TIFF, however, the date can be seen on the bulletin board, “21 Oct 99”. The Cyber 170 was produced in the late 1970s, so this unit is at least 20 years old.
The photograph is part of this collection at LOC: Cape Cod Air Station, Technical Facility-Scanner Building & Power Plant, Massachusetts Military Reservation, Sandwich, Barnstable County, MA
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)
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 not that the mainframe will be retired -- the 35-year-old system is "like a jet slowly losing its engines," said Dick Guertin, a software developer who has worked at Stanford since 1970. What is amazing, say those whose work lives have spanned much of the computer revolution, is that the mainframe system and the ground-breaking applications designed here to run on it have held up so well for so long.
At its peak, there were 30,000 accounts, including noncampus users, on the mainframe. Some of what McWilliam is doing requires real detective work, since many of the people who opened the accounts have long ago left Stanford or retired.
Also – Forsythe Mainframe Retirement (Wayback Machine link):
The mainframe era officially ended on December 15, 2003 when the last of the mainframe accounts was closed down.
(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)