Preface: Landmarks in Digital Computing

Landmarks in Digital Computing

PREFACE

This book began with three pieces of paper and a few weeks time in Liverpool. The first piece of paper was a short list of photographs of important objects in the history of digital computing, compiled to help answer public inquiries on the subject. The other two sheets were brief accounts of the history of two such objects, the abacus and the Hollerith tabulating machine. Having distributed these sheets in large numbers, one of the authors thought it would be useful to have brief historical accounts of all the objects on the list of photographs. Then people who ordered photographs might have some idea of what they showed. A few weeks in Liverpool, away from routine museum tasks, offered a chance to begin the work. This modest project has grown into the book that follows.

As the authors are most familiar with the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and National Air and Space Museum, the objects described are largely from collections and exhibits there. We encourage you to visit these exhibits. Should this be inconvenient, we also recommend the collections of computing devices at the Science Museum in London, the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris, the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Computer Museum in Boston. For armchair travelers, we have provided a bibliography that will allow you to explore specific topics further. For those who remain mostinterested in simply getting pictures, a list of some of the photographs available from the Smithsonian's Office of Printing and Photograhic Services is included at the end.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project has been made possible by the people and institutions who have generously provided objects to the Smithsonian over the years. We owe an additional debt to numerous Smithsonian staff, and here would particularly like to thank Uta C. Merzbach, Jon Eklund, David K. Allison, and Peter Liebold for help of diverse sorts. Several people outside the museum have graciously read sections of the book and made helpful comments. Here we specially thank William Aspray, William H. Skelley, and Kim Miller. At the same time, we wish to thank our spouses, Mark Kidwell and Diane Wendt, for their patience and encouragement, not to mention a trip to Liverpool.

Rev. 11/20/95