History of Computing: Learning from the Past

1. Front Matter

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2. Connections in the History of Australian Computing

   • John Deane

   Pages 1-12

3. Why the Real Thing Is Essential for Telling Our Stories

   • David Demant

   Pages 13-15

4. Wonder, Sorcery, and Technology: Contribute to the History of Medieval Robotics

   • Nadia Ambrosetti

   Pages 16-25

5. Andrew D. Booth – Britain’s Other “Fourth Man”

   • Roger G. Johnson

   Pages 26-37

6. The Many Dimensions of Kristen Nygaard, Creator of Object-Oriented Programming and the Scandinavian School of System Development

   • Drude Berntsen, Knut Elgsaas, Håvard Hegna

   Pages 38-49

7. Projects and Activities of the IPSJ Computer History Committee

   • Eiiti Wada

   Pages 50-57

8. Contested Histories: De-mythologising the Early History of Modern British Computing

   • David Anderson

   Pages 58-67

9. 50 Years Ago We Constructed the First Hungarian Tube Computer, the M-3: Short Stories from the History of the First Hungarian Computer (1957-1960)

   • Győző Kovács

   Pages 68-79

10. Anatoly Kitov - Pioneer of Russian Informatics

    • Vladimir A. Kitov, Valery V. Shilov

    Pages 80-88

11. Materiel Command and the Materiality of Commands: An Historical Examination of the US Air Force, Control Data Corporation, and the Advanced Logistics System

    • Jeffrey R. Yost

    Pages 89-100

12. Purpose-Built Educational Computers in the 1980s: The Australian Experience

    • Arthur Tatnall, Ralph Leonard

    Pages 101-111

13. And They Were Thinking? Basic, Logo, Personality and Pedagogy

    • John S. Murnane

    Pages 112-123

14. The Life and Growth of Year 12 Computing in Victoria: An Ecological Model

    • Arthur Tatnall, Bill Davey

    Pages 124-133

15. History of the European Computer Driving Licence

    • Denise Leahy, Dudley Dolan

    Pages 134-145

16. A Brief History of the Pick Environment in Australia

    • Stasys Lukaitis

    Pages 146-158

17. Turning Points in Computer Education

    • Bill Davey, Kevin R. Parker

    Pages 159-168

18. Existence Precedes Essence - Meaning of the Stored-Program Concept

    • Allan Olley

    Pages 169-178

19. Recession, S-Curves and Digital Equipment Corporation

    • David T. Goodwin, Roger G. Johnson

    Pages 179-188

20. ETHICS: The Past, Present and Future of Socio-Technical Systems Design

    • Shona Leitch, Matthew J. Warren

    Pages 189-197

History of Computing: Learning from the Past Why is the history of computing important? Given that the computer, as we now know it, came into existence less than 70 years ago it might seem a little odd to some people that we are concerned with its history. Isn’t history about ‘old things’? Computing, of course, goes back much further than 70 years with many earlier - vices rightly being known as computers, and their history is, of course, important. It is only the history of electronic digital computers that is relatively recent. History is often justified by use of a quote from George Santayana who famously said that: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. It is arguable whether there are particular mistakes in the history of computing that we should avoid in the future, but there is some circularity in this question, as the only way we will know the answer to this is to study our history. This book contains papers on a wide range of topics relating to the history of c- puting, written both by historians and also by those who were involved in creating this history. The papers are the result of an international conference on the History of Computing that was held as a part of the IFIP World Computer Congress in Brisbane in September 2010.

• Hardware
• ICT
• computer
• computer education
• computer history
• computers and society
• history of computing
• medieval computing
• teaching

• Victoria Graduate School of Business, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

  Arthur Tatnall

Policies and ethics