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by miniature digital computers programmed to emulate them; most
ordinary radios, for example, had lost their tuning dial by 1973 and were
‘‘tuned’’ by digital keypads. Ten years later, Time proclaimed the compu-
ter ‘‘Machine of the Year’’ for 1983, with the opening headline ‘‘The
Computer Moves In.’’
5
The latest manifestation of this takeover is the Internet, embraced
across the political and cultural spectrum, by Newt Gingrich, Al Gore,
Stewart Brand, the late Timothy Leary, ‘‘Generation X,’’ and numerous
people in between. Most accounts describe it as a marriage of commu-
nications and computing.
6
The evidence presented here suggests other-
wise; that the Internet simply represents yet another takeover, by digital
computing of an activity (telecommunications) that had a long history
based on analog techniques.
Those who so glowingly describe the World Wide Web as the culmina-
tion of fifty years of prologue either do not know or have forgotten
history. The very same statements were made when the first UNIVACs
were installed, when minicomputers and time-sharing appeared, and
when the personal computer was introduced (figure C.1). This will not
be the last time these words are spoken. But promises of a technological
Utopia have been common in American history, and at least a few
champions of the Internet are aware of how naive these earlier visions
were.
7
Silicon Valley has some of the most congested real highways in the
country, as people commute to work with a technology that Henry Ford
invented to reduce urban congestion. Most people have some sense of the
fact that the automobile did not fulfill many of Ford’s promises simply
because it was too successful. The word ‘‘smog’’ crept into the English

language around the time of Ford’s death in the late 1940s; ‘‘gridlock,’’
‘‘strip malls,’’ and ‘‘suburban sprawl’’ came later. What equivalent will
describe the dark side of networked digital computing? And will those
‘‘side effects’’ become evident only fifty years from now, as was the case
with automobiles? Can we anticipate them before it is too late or too
difficult to manage them?
Each transformation of digital computing was propelled by individuals
with an idealistic notion that computing, in its new form, would be a
liberating force that could redress many of the imbalances brought on
by the smokestack of the ‘‘second wave,’’ in Alvin Toffler’s phrase.
UNIVAC installations were accompanied by glowing predictions that
the ‘‘automation’’ they produced would lead to a reduced workweek. In
the mid-1960s enthusiasts and hackers saw the PDP-10 and PDP-8 as
machines that would liberate computing from the tentacles of the IBM
Conclusion: The Digitization of the World Picture 347
Figure C.1
Digital Utopia, as depicted on the cover of Byte magazine ( January 1977). Byte’s
cover illustrations stood out among all the computer publications. (Source :
Robert Tinney.)
348 Conclusion: The Digitization of the World Picture
octopus. The Apple II reflected the Utopian visions of the San Francisco
Bay area in the early 1970s. And so it will be with universal access to the
Internet.
In each case the future has turned out to be more complex, and less
revolutionary, than its proponents imagined. The UNIVAC did not solve
the problem of unemployment. Personal computers did not put ordin-
ary individuals on an equal footing with those in positions of power. It
did find a market that exceeded all expectations—but in the office and
not the home, as a tool that assisted the functions of the corporate
workplace.

8
Looking out over the polluted and decayed landscape of the
1970s-era industrial Rustbelt, young people programmed their personal
computers to model a middle landscape; one that gave its inhabitants all
the benefits of industrialization with none of the drawbacks. But the
social problems of the outside world remained. Utopia stayed inside the
computer screen and stubbornly refused to come out. Computer
modeling evolved into ‘‘virtual reality’’—a new variant of the mind-
altering drugs in vogue in the 1960s. Timothy Leary argued that virtual
reality was more effective than LSD as a way to bring humans back to the
Garden of Eden. So far that is not happening, and perhaps this is a good
thing, given the level of thought that characterizes most visions of what
Digital Utopia ought to look like.
We have seen that political and social forces have always shaped the
direction of digital computing. Now, with computing among the defin-
ing technologies of American society, those forces are increasingly out in
the open and part of public discussion. Politicians and judges as much as
engineers decide where highways and bridges get built, who may serve a
region with telephone service, and how much competition an electric
utility may have. These legislators and jurists rely upon industry lobbyists
or specialists on their staff to guide them through the technical dimen-
sion of their policies. All the while, new technologies (such as direct
broadcast satellite television) disrupt their plans. But that does not stop
the process or shift decision-making away from these centers.
Computing is no different. The idea of politicians directing technol-
ogy is still distasteful to computer pioneers, many of whom are still alive
and retain a vivid memory of how they surmounted technical, not
political, challenges. But when a technology becomes integrated into
the affairs of ordinary daily life, it must acknowledge politics. Some
groups, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (founded by Mitch

Kapor), are doing this by stepping back to try to identify the digital
equivalents of ‘‘smog’’ and ‘‘gridlock.’’ But historically the United States
Conclusion: The Digitization of the World Picture 349
has promoted as rapid a deployment of technology as possible, and has
left it to future generations to deal with the consequences. It is not
surprising, therefore, that attempts to regulate or control the content of
the Internet have so far been clumsy and have failed. How that plays out
remains to be seen.
A century and a half ago, Henry David Thoreau observed with
suspicion the technophilic aspect of American character. Railroads
were the high technology of his day, but he did not share the public’s
enthusiasm for the Fitchburg line, whose tracks ran behind Walden
Pond. ‘‘We do not ride on the railroad; it rides on us,’’ he said. What the
nation needs is ‘‘a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life.’’ A few
miles west of Thoreau’s cabin, the Fitchburg railroad built a branch to
serve the Assabet Mills, which by the time of the Civil War was one of the
country’s largest producers of woolen goods. A century later these same
mills were blanketing the Earth with PDP-8s. One wonders what Thoreau
would have made of this connection.
9
Would he have seized the
opportunity to set up his own Walden Pond home page, to let others
know what he was up to? Or would he have continued to rely on the
pencils he made for himself?
We created the computer to serve us. The notion that it might become
our master has been the stuff of science fiction for decades, but it was
always hard to take those stories seriously when it took heroic efforts just
to get a computer to do basic chores. As we start to accept the World
Wide Web as a natural part of our daily existence, perhaps it is time to
revisit the question of control. My hope is that, with an understanding of

history and a dash of Thoreauvian skepticism, we can learn to use the
computer rather than allowing it to use us.
350 Conclusion: The Digitization of the World Picture
Notes
Preface
1. Jim Clark, with Owen Edwards, Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar
Start-Up That Took on Microsoft (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
Introduction
1. Dictionaries, even editions published in the 1970s, define computer as ‘‘a
calculator especially designed for the solution of complex mathematical
problems.’’ This is the first definition given in Webster’s Third International
Dictionary, Unabridged; this definition is then qualified as ‘‘specifically: a program-
mable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data.’’
2. Some of the early automatic machines were called ‘‘calculators,’’ as in the
Harvard Mark I, or ‘‘Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator.’’ But the letter
‘‘C’’ in ENIAC, designed at the Moore School in the early 1940s and dedicated in
1946, stood for ‘‘Computer.’’
3. Amy Friedlander, Natural Monopoly and Universal Service: Telephones and Tele-
graphs in the U.S. Communications Infrastructure, 1837–1940 (Reston, VA: CNRI,
1995).
4. If anything, it might go the other way: historians of technology are turning
their attention to the mundane; and studies of computing are so common they
surprise no one. See, for example, Henry Petroski, The Pencil: a History of Design
and Circumstance (New York: Knopf, 1990), and Robert Friedel, Zipper: an
Exploration in Novelty (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994).
5. See, for example I. Bernard Cohen, Revolution in Science (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1985).
6. I had not heard of the World Wide Web when I began working on this study,
although I was aware of the existence of the Internet. Although touted as
revolutionary by Time on its cover in 1983, the personal computer is now

disparaged as crippled by its crude user interface and lack of connectivity to
the Web.
7. My unscientific basis for this observation is the vigorous activity in the history
of technology being undertaken by scholars on the World Wide Web. I have also
noted that historians are among the first to adopt the latest word processing and
scholars’ database tools.
8. See, for example, Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Morrow, 1980).
9. Even the best sociological studies of computing ignore its historical evolution,
as if the technology sociologists observe is a given and not something that is
rapidly evolving; for example, Shoshanna Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine
(New York: Basic Books, 1988), and Sherry Turkle, The Second Self, Computers and
the Human Spirit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
10. See, for example, James W. Cortada, Before the Computer (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1993); Arthur Norberg, ‘‘High Technology Calculation in
the Early Twentieth Century: Punched Card Machinery in Business and Govern-
ment,’’ Technology and Culture 31 (October 1990): 753–779; and JoAnne Yates,
Control Through Communication: the Rise of System in American Management (Balti-
more: John Hopkins University Press, 1989).
11. See, for example, James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and
Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1986).
12. For example, the Annals of the History of Computing, the journal of record for
the study of this subject, seldom publishes papers that connect computing
with, say, radar, ballistic missiles, or nuclear weapons history, other than on
the role of the computer as an aide to those technologies. On the other side,
one finds histories of modern 20th century technology that make no mention
of the computer at all, as in Thomas Parke Hughes, American Genesis: A Century
of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (New York: Viking,
1989).
13. Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society,

1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
14. The most accessible of the many works written on this topic is Wiebe E.
Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of
Technological Systems (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987).
15. The most important is Donald MacKenzie. See, for example, Inventing
Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1990), and ‘‘Negotiating Arithmetic, Constructing Proof: the Sociology
of Mathematics and Information Technology,’’ Social Studies of Science 23 (1993):
37–65. Another practitioner is Bryan Pfaffenberger; see his ‘‘The Social Meaning
of the Personal Computer, or Why the Personal Computer Revolution was no
Revolution,’’ Anthropological Quarterly 61: 1 (1988): 39–47.
352 Notes to Pages 3–5
16. See, for example Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984); and Paul Freiberger, Fire in the Valley: the
Making of the Personal Computer (Berkeley: Osborne=McGraw-Hill, 1984).
17. William Aspray, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990).
18. Tomas J. Misa, ‘‘Military Needs, Commercial Realities, and the Development
of the Transistor, 1948–1958,’’ in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and
Technological Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985): 253–287.
19. Michael A. Dennis, ‘‘A Change of State: the Political Cultures of Technolo-
gical Practice at the MIT Instrumentation Lab and the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory, 1930–1945’’ (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University,
1990).
20. Manuel DeLanda, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1991); also Chris Hables Gray, ‘‘Computers as Weapons and Metaphors:
The U.S. Military 1940–1990 and Postmodern War,’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of
California, Santa Cruz, 1991).
21. Charles Bashe, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, and Emerson Pugh, IBM’s
Early Computers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986); Emerson Pugh et al., IBM’s 360

and Early 370 Systems (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); and Emerson Pugh, Building
IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).
22. The term seems to have come into use around 1959.
23. George H. Mealy, ‘‘Operating Systems,’’ in Saul Rosen, ed., Programming
Systems and Languages (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967): 517–518.
24. JoAnne Yates, Control Through Communication: the Rise of System in American
Management (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); David F. Noble,
Forces of Production (New York: Knopf, 1984); James R. Beniger, The Control
Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1986).
25. Brian Randell, ed., The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers, 2nd ed.
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1975): 327–328; Peter J. Bird, LEO: the First Business
Computer (Berkshire, UK: Hasler Publishing Ltd., 1994).
26. Kenneth Flamm, Creating the Computer: Government, Industry, and High Tech-
nology (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1988): 134; see also Martin
Campbell-Kelly, ICL: a Business and Technical History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
27. Edward Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck, The Fifth Generation: Artificial
Intelligence and Japan’s Computer Challenge to the World (Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley, 1983); Michael Cusumano, ‘‘Factory Concepts and Practices in Software
Development,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 13: 1 (1991): 3–32.
Notes to Pages 5–11 353
28. Seymour E. Goodman, ‘‘Soviet Computing and Technology Transfer: an
Overview,’’ World Politics 31: 4 (July 1979): 539–570.
29. Using the computer for centralized planning has been touted by American
‘‘futurists’’ such as Herman Kahn and R. Buckminster Fuller. After completing
Project Whirlwind, J. Forrester turned to an application he called ‘‘System
Dynamics.’’ In 1996, large-scale computer modeling of the U.S. government
was vigorously promoted by presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, the founder of
Electronic Data Systems.

Chapter 1
1. Testimony by Cannon, Hagley Museum, Honeywell v. Sperry Rand papers,
Series III, Box 140, p. 17,680; see also Harold Bergstein, ‘‘An Interview with
Eckert and Mauchly,’’ Datamation (April 1962): 25–30. A more detailed analysis of
Aiken’s observation is discussed in a forthcoming book by I. Bernard Cohen on
the life and work of Howard Aiken. I am grateful to Professor Cohen for making
drafts of the relevant chapters of this book available to me before its publication.
2. Note that in 1994 the U.S. government suspended support for the Super-
conducting Super Collider (SSC). So it appears there that the total world
‘‘market’’ has peaked at about a dozen cyclotrons, a scientific instrument
invented around the same time as the electronic computer with about the
same cost and complexity.
3. For example, in an address by von Neumann to the Mathematical Computing
Advisory Panel of the U.S. Navy in May 1946, he compares the electronic
computers then under development to ‘‘ what is at present still the major
practical mode of computing, namely, human procedure with an electromecha-
nical desk multiplier.’’ Published in the Annals of the History of Computing 10
(1989): 248.
4. For an account of the early development of this activity, see JoAnne Yates,
Control Through Communication: the Rise of System in American Management (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); also James Beniger, The Control
Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
5. Arthur Norberg, ‘‘High Technology Calculation in the Early Twentieth
Century: Punched Card Machinery in Business and Government,’’ Technology
and Culture 31 (1990): 753–779; also Martin Campbell-Kelly, ICL: a Business and
Technical History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
6. The following discussion on punched-card computation is derived from
Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Punched-Card Machinery,’’ in William Aspray, ed.,
Computing Before Computers (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990), chapter
4; also Campbell-Kelly, ICL; and Edmund C. Berkeley, Giant Brains, or Machines

that Think (New York: Wiley, 1949), chapter 4.
354 Notes to Pages 11–16
7. Campbell-Kelly, in Aspray, ed., Computing Before Computers; also the review of
Campbell-Kelly’s ICL by Kenneth Flamm in Annals of the History of Computing 13: 1
(1991).
8. Wallace J. Eckert, Punched Card Methods in Scientific Computation (New York:
The Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau, Columbia University,
1940): 22.
9. Ibid., 1.
10. Ibid., 108–110. Of the twelve steps, only the first six were performed
automatically; the rest required some human intervention.
11. J. Lynch and C. E. Johnson, ‘‘Programming Principles for the IBM Relay
Calculators,’’ Ballistic Research Laboratories, Report No. 705, October 1949,
IBM Archives, Valhalla, New York.
12. Ibid., 8.
13. Brian Randell, ed., The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers, 2d ed.
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1975): 188.
14. Lynch and Johnson, ‘‘Programming Principles,’’ 4; also Wallace Eckert, ‘‘The
IBM Pluggable Sequence Relay Calculator,’’ Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to
Computation 3 (1948): 149–161; also Ballistic Research Laboratories, ‘‘Computing
Laboratory,’’ undated 15-page brochure, probably 1952, National Air and Space
Museum, NBS Collection.
15. Charles J. Bashe, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, and Emerson Pugh, IBM’s
Early Computers (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986): 44–46, 59–68.
16. Ibid., 67.
17. William Woodbury, ‘‘The 603-405 Computer,’’ in Proceedings of a Second
Symposium on Calculating Machinery; Sept. 1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1951): 316–320; also Michael R. Williams, A History of Computing Technology
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985): 256.
18. G. J. Toben, quoted in Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 69.

19. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers,68–72; also John W. Sheldon and Liston
Tatum, ‘‘The IBM Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator,’’ Review of Electronic
Digital Computers, Joint IRE-AIEE Conference, February 1952, 30–36.
20. Paul Ceruzzi, Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1989), chapter 2; see also Smithsonian Videohistory Program, RAND
Corporation interviews, June 12–13, 1990; interview with Clifford Shaw, 12 June
1990, 13.
21. In France, Compagnie des Machines Bull introduced, in 1952, a machine
having a similar architecture. Called the ‘‘Gamma 3,’’ it was very successful and
was one of the first products produced in France to achieve a critical mass of
Notes to Pages 16–20 355
sales. See Bruno LeClerc, ‘‘From Gamma 2 to Gamma E.T.: The Birth of
Electronic Computing at Bull,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 12: 1 (1990):
5–22.
22. See, for example, Computer Research Corporation, ‘‘Comparison of the
Card-Programmed Computer [sic] with the General-Purpose Model CRC 102-
A,’’ 16 page pamphlet (1953) National Air & Space Museum, NBS archive.
23. David Alan Grier, ‘‘The ENIAC, the Verb ‘to program’ and the Emergence of
Digital Computers,’’ Annals of the History of Computers 18: 1 (1996): 51–55.
24. ‘‘Historical Comments,’’ in L. R. Johnson, System Structure in Data, Programs,
and Computers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970): 185. A copy of the
original memorandum is in the University of Pennsylvania archives.
25. For a discussion of the fate of the EDVAC see Michael Williams, ‘‘The
Origins, Uses, and Fate of the EDVAC,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 15
(1993): 22–38.
26. A copy of the First Draft is in the National Air and Space Museum Archives,
NBS Collection.
27. It also comes from the fact that the IAS machine was copied in a number of
locations.
28. Herman Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1972): 182.
29. Because the term ‘‘programming’’ had not yet come into use, I use ‘‘set up’’
in this section.
30. John Mauchly, ‘‘Preparation of Problems for EDVAC-Type Machines,’’
Harvard University, Proceedings of a Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating
Machinery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948): 203–207.
31. Eckert, ‘‘Disclosure ,’’ written January 29, 1944; reprinted in Herman
Lukoff, From Dits to Bits: A Personal History of the Electronic Computer (Portland, OR:
Robotics Press): 207–209.
32. J. Presper Eckert, ‘‘Disclosure of a Magnetic Calculating Machine,’’ Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, Moore School of Electrical Engineering, memorandum of
January 29, 1944; in Lukoff, From Dits to Bits, 207–209; also J. Presper Eckert and
John Mauchly, ‘‘Automatic High Speed Computing: A Progress Report on the
EDVAC,’’ portions reprinted in Johnson, System Structure in Data, Programs, and
Computers, 184–187. There are many accounts of the relationship of von
Neumann with Eckert and Mauchly, and of the relative contributions each
made to the EDVAC report. See Goldstine, Computer From Pascal to von Neumann;
Mauchly’s own account is told in ‘‘Amending the ENIAC Story,’’ Datamation
(October 1979): 217–220. The details of these events were covered in the trial
Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, Inc., concluded in 1974.
356 Notes to Pages 20–22
33. The above discussion makes no mention of the possible contribution of Alan
Turing, who stated something very much like this principle in theoretical terms
long before. Turing may have inspired those working on the EDVAC design, but
that is unknown at this time.
34. For more on who invented the Stored-Program Principle, see Annals of the
History of Computing 4 (October 1982): 358–361.
35. Moore School of Electrical Engineering, ‘‘Theory and Techniques for
Design of Electronic Digital Computers; Lectures Given at the Moore School
of Electrical Engineering, July 8–August 31, 1946’’ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985

[reprint]).
36. The acronym EDSAC stands for ‘‘Electronic Delay Storage Automatic
Calculator’’; BINAC stands for ‘‘Binary Automatic Computer.’’
37. The term ‘‘word’’ as applied to a chunk of digits handled in a computer
probably also came from von Neumann.
38. A typical modern description of the architecture is described in ‘‘Digital
Computer Architecture,’’ in Jack Belzer, Albert Holzman, and Allen Kent, eds.,
Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, vol. 7 (New York: Dekker, 1970):
289–326.
39. For an example of how this subject is treated in introductory college-level
textbooks, see Helene G. Kershner, Introduction to Computer Literacy (Lexington,
MA: D. C. Heath, 1990), Jack B. Rochester and Jon Rochester, Computers for People
(Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1991). See also W. Danniel Hillis, ‘‘The
Connection Machine,’’ Scientific American (June 1987): 108–115, for an explicit
statement of the ‘‘non-von-Neumann’’ nature of parallel designs. Ironically, Hillis
incorrectly identifies the ENIAC as a sequential machine; in fact, the ENIAC was
a parallel processing machine.
40. Alan Perlis, ‘‘Epigrams on Programming,’’ ACM Sigplan Notices (October
1981): 7–13.
41. In the following discussion I rely heavily on the arguments and data in Nancy
Stern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC: an Appraisal of the Eckert-Mauchly Computers
(Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1981), especially chapter 5.
42. Mauchly, memorandum of 3=31=1948; Hagley Museum, Sperry Univac
Company Records, Series I, Box 3, folder ‘‘Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corpora-
tion; Mauchly, John.’’
43. Von Neumann to Herman Goldstine, letter of May 8, 1945; Hagley Museum,
Sperry Univac Corporate Records; Series II, Box 74, folder ‘‘May 1945–October
1945.’’
44. Howard H. Aiken, ‘‘The Future of Automatic Computing Machinery,’’
Elektronische Rechenmaschinen und Informationsverarbeitung; Beihefte der

NTZ, Band 4, 1956, pp. 31–35. Incredibly, he made this statement in 1956, by
Notes to Pages 22–25 357
which time there was ample evidence that such machines not only existed but
were becoming rather common. Wallace Eckert commented on computers vs.
punched card machines at one of several conferences on high speed computing
machinery held at Harvard in the late 1940s.
45. Stern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC, 91. Stern believes that ‘‘the two men were,
in fact, fired.’’
46. Mauchly to J. P. Eckert Jr. et al, 1=12=1948; Hagley Museum, Sperry UNIVAC
Company Records, Series I, Box 3, folder ‘‘Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corpora-
tion; Mauchly, John.’’
47. Computers and Their Future (Lladudno, Wales, 1970): 7–8
48. Stern, From ENIAC to UNIVAC, 148–151. In Britain, the LEO computer ran
test programs on the premises of the J. Lyons Catering Company of London by
February 1951, a month before the UNIVAC delivery. However, it was not until
late 1953 before LEO was considered finished. See S. H. Lavington, Early British
Computers (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1980): 72–73; also Peter Bird, ‘‘LEO, the
Pride of Lyons,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 14: 2 (1992): 55–56.
49. Oral History Session, UNISYS Corporation, May 17–18, 1990, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC.
50. L. R. Johnson, ‘‘Installation of a Large Electronic Computer,’’ in Proceedings of
the ACM Meeting (Toronto, September 8–10, 1952): 77–81.
51. J. Presper Eckert, ‘‘Thoughts on the History of Computing,’’ IEEE Computer
(December 1976): 64.
52. Luther A. Harr, ‘‘The Univac System, a 1954 Progress Report’’ (Remington
Rand Corporation, 1954): 6.
53. James C. McPherson, ‘‘Census Experience Operating a UNIVAC System,’’
Symposium on Managerial Aspects of Digital Computer Installations (30 March, 1953,
Washington, DC): 33.
54. Lukoff, From Dits to Bits, chapter 9.

55. Roddy F. Osborn, ‘‘GE and UNIVAC: Harnessing the High-Speed Compu-
ter,’’ Harvard Business Review (July–August 1954): 102.
56. McPherson, ‘‘Census Experience Operating a UNIVAC System,’’ 30–36.
57. Remington Rand Corporation, ‘‘Univac Fac-Tronic System,’’ Undated
brochure, ca. 1951, Unisys Archives; also McPherson, ‘‘Census Experience
Operating a UNIVAC System.’’
58. Paul E. Ceruzzi,‘‘The First Generation of Computers and the Aerospace
Industry,’’ National Air and Space Museum Research Report (1985): 75–89; also
Robert Dorfman, ‘‘The Discovery of Linear Programming,’’ Annals of the History
of Computing 6: 3 (1984): 283–295, and Mina Rees, ‘‘The Computing Program at
358 Notes to Pages 25–31
the Office of Naval Research,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 4: 2 (1982): 102–
120.
59. L. R. Johnson, ‘‘Installation of a Large Electronic Computer,’’ In Proceedings
of ACM Meeting (Toronto, 1952): 77–81.
60. Luther Harr, ‘‘The UNIVAC System, a 1954 Progress Report,’’ (Remington
Rand Corporation, 1954) UNISYS Archives.
61. Ibid., 7.
62. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, ‘‘Computing at Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory,’’ UCID Report 20079, 1984.
63. Roddy F. Osborn, ‘‘GE and UNIVAC: Harnessing the High-Speed Compu-
ter,’’ Harvard Business Review (July–August 1954): 99–107.
64. John Diebold, Automation (New York: Van Nostrand, 1952).
65. John Diebold, ‘‘Factories Without Men: New Industrial Revolution,’’ The
Nation (1953): 227–228, 250–251, 271–272. See also David F. Noble, Forces of
Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation (New York: Knopf, 1986),
chapter 4.
66. Roddy Osborn, ‘‘GE and UNIVAC,’’ 99.
67. Ibid., 103; also UNIVAC Oral History, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
68. Ibid., 104.

69. Ibid., 107.
70. Harr, ‘‘The UNIVAC System: A 1954 Progress Report,’’ 1. UNISYS Archives.
71. Smithsonian=UNISYS UNIVAC Oral History Project, May 17–18 (1990).
72. Emerson W. Pugh, Memories that Shaped an Industry (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1984): 30.
73. Saul Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers: a Historical Survey,’’ Computing Surveys 1
(March 1969): 7–36.
74. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 161–162.
75. Cuthbert C. Hurd, ‘‘Edited Testimony,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 3
(April 1981): 168.
76. Ibid., 169.
77. Ibid., 169.
78. Ibid., 169.
79. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers 129.
Notes to Pages 31–36 359
80. Ibid., 173–178.
81. Erwin Tomash and Arnold A. Cohen. ‘‘The Birth of an ERA: Engineering
Research Associates, Inc., 1946–1955,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 1: 2
(1979): 83–97; also Charles J. Murray, The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and
the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer (New York: Wiley, 1997).
82. Seymour Cray, ‘‘What’s All This About Gallium Arsenide?’’ Videotape in the
author’s possession of a talk given at the ‘‘Supercomputing ’88’’ conference in
Orlando, Florida, November 1988; also Murray, The Supermen,44–45.
83. Tomash and Cohen, ‘‘The Birth of an ERA,’’ 90.
84. Seymour R. Cray, ‘‘Computer-Programmed Preventative Maintenance for
Internal Memory Sections of the ERA 1103 Computer System,’’ in Proceedings of
WESCON (1954): 62–66.
85. Samuel S. Snyder, ‘‘Influence of U.S. Cryptologic Organizations on the
Digital Computer Industry,’’ Journal of Systems and Software 1 (1979): 87–102.
86. Ben Ferber, ‘‘The Use of the Charactron with the ERA 1103,’’ Proceedings of

WJCC (February 7–9, 1956): 34–35.
87. Alice R. and Arthur W. Burks, The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), chapter 1; also J. Presper
Eckert, ‘‘A Survey of Digital Computer Memory Systems,’’ in Proceedings of IRE
(October 1953): 1393–1406.
88. Perry O. Crawford Jr., ‘‘Automatic Control by Arithmetic Operations’’
(Master’s thesis, MIT, 1942). The bulk of Crawford’s thesis discussed photo-
graphic rather than magnetic storage techniques, but it appears that this thesis
was partially the inspiration for work that Eckert later did at the Moore School.
89. Tomash and Cohen, ‘‘The Birth of an ERA,’’ 83–97.
90. Engineering Research Associates, Inc., High-Speed Computing Devices (New
York: McGraw Hill, 1950; reprinted 1983, Los Angeles: Tomash Publishers): 322–
339.
91. Richard E. Sprague, ‘‘The CADAC,’’ U.S. Navy, Symposium on Commercially
Available General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers of Moderate Price (Washington,
DC: 1952): 13–17.
92. Richard E. Sprague, ‘‘A Western View of Computer History,’’ Comm ACM 15
(July 1972): 686–692.
93. E. D. Lucas, ‘‘Efficient Linkage of Graphical Data with a Digital Computer,’’
in Proceedings of WESCON (1954): 32–37.
94. Willis E. Dobbins, ‘‘Designing a Low-Cost General Purpose Computer,’’ in
Proceedings of ACM Meeting (Toronto, September, 1952): 28–29.
360 Notes to Pages 36–40
95. Sprague, ‘‘A Western View of Computer History,’’ CACM: 686–692.
96. C. Gordon Bell and Allen Newell, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971): 217.
97. B. E. Carpenter and R. W. Doran, ‘‘The Other Turing Machine,’’ Computer
Journal 20 (August 1977): 269–279.
98. Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Programming the Pilot ACE: Early Programming at
the National Physical Laboratory,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 3 (1981):

133–162.
99. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 168.
100. Tomash and Cohen, ‘‘The Birth of an ERA,’’ 83–97.
101. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, chapters 3 and 5.
102. Ibid., 170–172.
103. Thomas J. Watson Jr., Father, Son & Co: My Life at IBM and Beyond (New York:
Bantam Books, 1990): 224.
104. Lancelot W. Armstrong, UNIVAC Conference, Smithsonian Institution,
May 17–18, 1990 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Archives): 105.
105. F. C. Williams and T. Kilburn, ‘‘A Storage System for Use with Binary-Digital
Computing Machines,’’ Institution of Electrical Engineers in Proceedings III: 96
(March 1949): 81–100.
106. J. C. Chu and R. J. Klein, ‘‘Williams Tube Selection Program,’’ in Proceedings
ACM Meeting (Toronto, September, 1952): 110–114.
Chapter 2
1. Joanne Yates, Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American
Management (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
2. Francis J. Murray, Mathematical Machines, vol. 1: Digital Computers (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1961): 43–44; also Edwin Darby, It All Adds Up: The
Growth of the Victor Comptometer Corporation (Chicago: Victor Comptometer
Corporation, 1968).
3. The property is called ‘‘hysteresis,’’ after the Greek word to denote
‘‘deficiency’’ or ‘‘lagging,’’ because the rate at which the material becomes
magnetized lags behind the rate at which a magnetizing current can affect it.
4. Emerson Pugh, Memories that Shaped an Industry: Decisions Leading to IBM
System=360 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), chapter 2.
Notes to Pages 40–50 361
5. Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith, Project Whirlwind: The History of a
Pioneer Computer (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1980): 206; ‘‘Engineering Report on
the Static Magnetic Memory for the ENIAC,’’ Burroughs Corporation, Report

prepared for the Ballistics Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground,
Philadelphia, 31 July, 1953; also Electronics (May 1953): 198 and 200. The
Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has one of the surviving
remnants of a Mark IV shift register that used Wang’s invention.
6. Pugh, Memories, 59.
7. ‘‘SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment),’’ Special Issue, Annals of the
History of Computing 5: 4 (1983).
8. Morton M. Astrahan and John F. Jacobs, ‘‘History of the Design of the SAGE
Computer–-the AN=FSQ-7,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 5: 4 (1983): 343–
344. One witness to those events remembered that as the team was visiting an
IBM facility, a technician who was adjusting a drum accidentally let the
screwdriver hit the drum’s surface, causing a sound not unlike fingernails run
across a blackboard. To everyone’s surprise, no data stored on the drum were
lost. In any event, the orderly production facilities that IBM had set up for its
commercial computers was judged to be ahead of what the other companies
could show.
9. Gordon Bell, ‘‘The Computer Museum Member’s First Field Trip: The
Northbay [sic] AN=FSQ SAGE Site,’’ CACM 26: 2 (1983): 118–119.
10. Edmund Van Deusen, ‘‘Electronics Goes Modern,’’ Fortune (June 1955): 132–
136, 148.
11. Pugh, Memories, 102–117.
12. Ibid., 126.
13. Katherine Fishman, The Computer Establishment (New York: Harper & Row,
1981): 44.
14. Saul Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers: a Historical Survey,’’ Computing Surveys 1
(March 1969): 7–36.
15. Ibid.; also Fishman, The Computer Establishment, 161–162. For details on the
RAYDAC, see Engineering Research Associates, High Speed Computing Devices
(New York, McGraw-Hill, 1950): 206–207.
16. For an insider’s view of Honeywell’s decision, see interview with Richard

Bloch, Smithsonian Computer History Project; also W. David Gardner, ‘‘Chip off
the Old Bloch,’’ Datamation (June 1982): 241–242.
17. Fortune 52 (July 1955), supplement, 2–5.
18. Robert W. House, ‘‘Reliability Experience on the OARAC,’’ in Proceedings
Eastern Joint Computer Conference (1953): 43–44; also Robert Johnson, Interview,
Annals of the History of Computing 12: 2 (1990): 130–137; and George Snively,
362 Notes to Pages 50–54
‘‘General Electric Enters the Computer Business, Annals of the History of Comput-
ing 10: (1988): 74–78.
19. Homer R. Oldfield, King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric’s Ambiguous
Challenge to the Computer Industry (Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society
Press, 1996).
20. Fishman, Computer Establishment, 164–165.
21. W. K. Halstead et al., ‘‘Purpose and Application of the RCA BIZMAC
System,’’ in Proceedings Western Joint Computer Conference (1956): 119–123; also
Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers,’’ 16–17.
22. Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers,’’ 16–17; W. K. Halstead, et al., ‘‘Purpose and
Application of the RCA BIZMAC System,’’ 119–123.
23. R. P. Daly, ‘‘Integrated Data Processing with the UNIVAC File Computer,’’
Proceedings Western Joint Computer Conference (1956): 95–98.
24. Franklin Fisher, James McKie, and Richard Mancke, IBM and the U.S. Data
Processing Industry (New York, Praeger, 1983): 53.
25. See, for example, T. A. Heppenheimer, ‘‘How von Neumann Showed the
Way,’’ American Heritage of Invention & Technology (Fall 1990): 8–16.
26. The following description is taken from several texts, including John L.
Hennessy and David A. Patterson, Computer Architecture: a Quantitative Approach
(San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1990); Simon Lavington, Early British
Computers (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1980): 106–119; C. Gordon Bell and
Allen Newell, Computer Structures: Readings and Examples (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1971).

27. Bell and Newell, Computer Structures, 224; also Adams Associates, ‘‘Computer
Characteristics Chart,’’ Datamation (November=December, 1960): 14–17.
28. Simon Lavington, History of Manchester Computers (Manchester, UK: NCC
Publications, 1975): 12.
29. C. C. Hurd, ‘‘Early IBM Computers: Edited Testimony,’’ Annals of the History
of Computing 3: 2 (April 1981): 185–176.
30. Lavington, History of Manchester Computers,78–82; also Hennessy and Patter-
son, Computer Architecture,91–92.
31. Werner Buchholz, ed., Planning a Computer System: Project Stretch (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1962), chapter 9.
32. The stack concept in computer architecture probably originated with
Professor F. L. Bauer of the Technical University of Munich; see for example,
F. L. Bauer, ‘‘The Formula-Controlled Logical Computer STANISLAUS,’’ MTAC
14 (1960): 64–67.
Notes to Pages 54–62 363
33. Richard E. Smith, ‘‘A Historical Overview of Computer Architecture,’’
Annals of the History of Computing 10: 4 (1989): 286.
34. T. H. Myer and I. E. Sutherland, ‘‘On the Design of Display Processors,’’
Communications of the ACM 11: 6 (June 1968): 410–414; also C. Gordon Bell, J.
Craig Mudge, and John McNamara, Computer Engineering: a DEC View of Hardware
Systems Design (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1978): 202.
35. Bell, Mudge, and McNamara, Computer Engineering, 256–257.
36. Gerald Brock, The Telecommunications Industry: the Dynamics of Market Structure
(Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1981): 187–194. Little of the litigation had to do with
the transistor; much, however, concerned Bell’s Western Electric subsidiary’s
role as manager of the Sandia Corporation, a military installation in New Mexico
that manufactured atomic bombs.
37. Thomas J. Misa, ‘‘Military Needs, Commercial Realities, and the Develop-
ment of the Transistor, 1948–1958,’’ in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise
and Technological Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985): 253–287; also J. H.

Felker, ‘‘Performance of TRADIC System,’’ in Proceedings Eastern Joint Computer
Conference (1954): 46–49. These machines were used point-contact transistors,
which were not only unreliable but difficult to produce in large quantities.
38. John Allen, ‘‘The TX-0: its Past and Present,’’ Computer Museum Report #8
(Spring 1984): 2–11.
39. Samuel Snyder, ‘‘Influence of U.S. Cryptologic Organizations on the Digital
Computer Industry,’’ Journal of Systems and Software 1 (1979): 87–102.
40. Ibid.; also telephone conversation with Ray Potts, March 31, 1995.
41. Herman Lukoff, From Dits to Bits: a Personal History of the Electronic Computer
(Portland, OR: Robotics Press, 1979); J. L. Maddox et al., ‘‘The TRANSAC S-1000
Computer,’’ in Proceedings Eastern Joint Computer Conference (December 1956): 13–
16; also Saul Rosen, ‘‘Electronic Computers: a Historical Survey.’’
42. Ibid., 89.
43. Fisher, IBM and the U.S. Data Processing Industry, 87.
44. L. P. Robinson, ‘‘Model 30-201 Electronic Digital Computer,‘‘ Symposium on
Commercially-available General-purpose Digital Computers of Moderate Price (Washing-
ton, DC, 14 May 1952): 31–36.
45. Fisher, IBM and the U.S. Data Processing Industry, 83.
46. For many years this computer was on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s
National Museum of American History. The claim is taken from a brochure
Burroughs made available for that exhibit. Oral histories of several Burroughs
employees are on file with the Smithsonian Computer History Project, including
an interview with Robert Campbell, 11 April 1972.
364 Notes to Pages 62–67
47. William Rodgers, Think: a Biography of the Watsons and IBM (New York, Stein
& Day, 1969): 58–60.
48. Ibid., 213.
49. The most colorful and vehement attack on IBM is found in Ted Nelson,
Computer Lib (South Bend, IN: Ted Nelson, 1974): 52–56.
50. Eric Weiss, ‘‘Obituary: Robert B. Forest,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 19:

2 (1997): 70–73.
51. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 280.
52. Ibid., 286.
53. Ibid., also T. Noyes and W. E. Dickenson, ‘‘Engineering Design of a Magnetic
Disk Random Access Memory,’’ in Proceedings, Western Joint Computer Conference
(February 7, 1956): 42–44.
54. Mitchell E. Morris, ‘‘Professor RAMAC’s Tenure,’’ Datamation (April 1981):
195–198.
55. This story has been independently told to the author by several people,
including at least one person who worked on the BMEWS system at the time.
Charles Bashe, et al, in IBM’sofficial history, mentions a ‘‘very taut schedule’’ but
does not repeat this story. See Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1986): 446–449.
56. For a period of two years at its Federal Systems Division, IBM did not allow
interactive terminals at the sites where its programmers were working. All
programs had to be submitted on the standard forms. A more typical situation
was to have the programmers use the forms, letting keypunchers prepare the
decks, but providing a single 029 punch so that he or she could punch one or
two cards from time to time. See Robert N. Britcher, ‘‘Cards, Couriers, and the
Race to Correctness,’’ Journal of Systems and Software 17 (1992): 281–284.
57. Bashe et al., IBM’s Early Computers, 468–469.
58. Bell and Newell, Computer Structures, chapter 18; also Fisher et al., IBM and the
U.S. Data Processing Industry, 53.
Chapter 3
1. I wish to thank Professor J. A. N. Lee, of Virginia Tech, for bringing this
citation to my attention.
2. The story is told by Merrill Flood, a research mathematician at the RAND
Corporation, in a letter to the editor, Datamation (December 1, 1984): 15–16.
Flood says that he heard Ike’s comment secondhand.
Notes to Pages 67–79 365

3. National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC. Press release dated 6
October 1993.
4. Susan Lammers, ed., Programmers at Work (Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press,
1989), 278.
5. Margaret Hamilton, interview with the author, 6 April 1992; J. David Bolter,
Turing’s Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1984).
6. Alan Perlis has said of this, ‘‘Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything
is possible but nothing is easy.’’ In Perlis, ‘‘Epigrams on Programming,’’ ACM
SIGPLAN Notices (October 1981): 10.
7. Barry Boehm, ‘‘Software Engineering,’’ IEEE Transactions on Computers C25
(December 1976), 1226–1241; for a refutation of Boehm’s thesis, see Werner
Frank, ‘‘The History of Myth #1,’’ Datamation (May 1983): 252–263.
8. Brian Randell, ‘‘Epilogue,’’ in Charles and Ray Eames, A Computer Perspective:
Background to the Computer Age, new edition, foreword by I. Bernard Cohen
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990): 163.
9. Harvard University Computation Laboratory, A Manual of Operation for the
Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, Charles Babbage Institute Reprint series,
vol. 8 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985; originally published 1946).
10. Hopper, quoted in ‘‘Computers and Their Future: Speeches Given at the
World Computer Pioneer Conference,’’ Lladudno, Wales, July 1970, (Lladudno:
Richard Williams and Partners): 7=3–7=4.
11. Grace Hopper, Log Book for the ASCC, April 7–Aug. 31, 1994; Smithsonian
Institution Archives; a description of Baker’s problem is found in Herbert
Grosch, Computer: Bit Slices from a Life (Novato, CA: Third Millennium Books,
1991): 51–52.
12. Some of these concepts predate the digital era and can be traced to, for
example, the MIT Differential Analyzer, an analog machine that was
programmed by sequences of tapes. See interview with Perry Crawford, Smith-
sonian Computer History Project, 29 October 1970.

13. Konrad Zuse, ‘‘Planfertigungsgera¨te,’’ 1944; Bonn, Gesellschaft fu¨r Mathe-
matik und Datenverarbeitung, Zuse Archive, folder 101=024.
14. Konrad Zuse, ‘‘Der Programmator,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r Angewandte Mathematik und
Mechanik 32 (1952): 246; Heinz Rutishauser, ‘‘Rechenplanfertigung bei
programmgesteuerten Rechenmaschinen,’’ Mitteilungen aus dem Institut fu¨r
angewandte Mathematik der ETH, no. 3, 1952; also F. L. Bauer, ‘‘Between
Zuse and Rutishauser: the Early Development of Digital Computing in Central
Europe,’’ in N. Metropolis, J. Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, eds., A History of
Computing in the Twentieth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1980): 505–524.
366 Notes to Pages 79–84
15. Rutishauser, ‘‘Automatische Rechenplanfertigung bei programmgesteuerten
Rechenmaschinen,’’ ZAMP 3 (1952): 312–313 (author’s translation).
16. Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Programming the EDSAC: Early Programming
Activity at the University of Cambridge,’’ Annals of the History of Computing 2
(1980): 7–36; Also Maurice Wilkes, D. J. Wheeler, and Stanley Gill, The Preparation
of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer (Cambridge: Addison-Wesley, 1951).
17. Maurice Wilkes, Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985):
142–144.
18. Smithsonian Institution, NMAH Archives, Grace Hopper Papers, Box 5,
folder #1, program of ACM Meeting, Oak Ridge, April 1949.
19. J. W. Mauchly, memorandum to EMCC executive committee, 16 August
1948; Hagley Museum, Accession 1825, Series I, Box 3: Mauchly, John; also
Richard Pearson, ‘‘Admiral Hopper Dies; Pioneer in Computers,’’ Washington
Post (January 2, 1992).
20. Grace Hopper, ‘‘Compiling Routines,’’ internal memorandum, Eckert-
Mauchly Computer Corporation, Philadelphia, 31 December 1953; Box 6,
folder 9, Hopper Papers, Smithsonian Archives.
21. Ibid.
22. Hopper papers, NMAH, Box 5, folder 7. Here she uses the term ‘‘generator’’
in a sense that one might use ‘‘compiler’’ today.

23. For a concise definition of the terms ‘‘compiler’’ and ‘‘interpreter’’ as they
were initially used, see Grace M. Hopper, ‘‘Compiling Routines,’’ Computers and
Automation 2 (May 1953): 1–5. In Hopper’s words: ‘‘The interpretive method of
using subroutines consists of fixing the location of the subroutine in the
computer memory, and causing the main program to interpret what may be
called a ‘‘pseudo-code,’’ and thus refer to the subroutine and perform it The
compiling method of using subroutines consists of copying the subroutine in to
the main routine, adjusting memory locations as necessary to position the
subroutine properly in the program and to supply arguments and results’’ (p. 2).
24. Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill discuss a program they call an ‘‘assembly subrou-
tine,’’ which does the same thing. They also describe something similar that they
call ‘‘interpretive’’ routines: See Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill, The Preparation of
Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer,26–37. These terms survive to the
present day but with different meanings. Suffice it to say that in the early 1950s it
had become clear that the computer could be instructed to take over many of
the chores of producing programs, but just how much, and in what form, was less
certain. See Also Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Programming the EDSAC: Early
Programming Activity at the University of Cambridge,’’ Annals of the History of
Computing, 2 (1980): 7–36.
Notes to Pages 84–85 367
25. Michael Mahoney, ‘‘Software and the Assembly Line,’’ paper presented at
Workshop on Technohistory of Electrical Information Technology, Deutsches
Museum, Munich, December 15–19, 1990.
26. J. H. Laning and N. Zierler, ‘‘A Program for Translation of Mathematical
Equations for Whirlwind I,’’ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Engineering Memorandum
no. E-364, January 1954). National Air and Space Museum, NBS Collection, Box
39, Folder 8.
27. See John Backus, ‘‘Programming in America in the 1950s—Some Personal
Recollections,’’ in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds. History of Computing in the
Twentieth Century, 125–135, especially pp. 133–134.

28. Laning and Zierler, ‘‘A Program for Translation of Mathematical Equations
For Whirlwind I,’’ (1954) frontispiece. In the copy that I examined, from
the library of the National Bureau of Standards, someone—possibly Samuel
Alexander—crossed out the word ‘‘interpretive’’ and wrote in pencil above
it ‘‘translated.’’
29. Backus, ‘‘Programming in America.’’
30. Charles W. Adams and J. H. Laning Jr., ‘‘The MIT Systems of Automatic
Coding: Comprehensive, Summer Session, and Algebraic,’’ in Symposium on
Automatic Programming of Digital Computers (Washington, DC: U.S. Navy, 1954): 64.
31. Donald Knuth, ‘‘The Early Development of Programming Languages,’’ in
Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds., History of Computing in the Twentieth Century,
239.
32. Paul Armer, ‘‘SHARE—a Eulogy to Cooperative Effort,’’ Annals of the History
of Computing, 2: 2 (April 1980): 122–129. Armer says that ‘‘SHARE’’ did not stand
for anything; others say it stood for ‘‘Society to Help Avoid Redundant Effort.’’
33. Donald Knuth, Sorting and Searching (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1973): 3.
34. See, for example, the work of C. A. R. Hoare. See also Knuth, Sorting and
Searching.
35. Von Neumann to Herman Goldstine, 8 May 1945; Hagley Museum, Acces-
sion 1825, Box 74, series II, Chron File, May 1945–October 1945.
36. Donald Knuth, ‘‘Von Neumann’s First Computer Program,’’ Computing
Surveys 2 (December 1970): 247–260.
37. Between 1947 to June of 1950 Holberton went by the surname Snyder.
See interview with Holberton, UNIVAC Oral History Conference, Smithsonian
Institution, May 17–18, 1990, 52; Smithsonian Institution Archives. Soon after
Remington Rand acquired EMCC, she left for the U.S. Navy’s David Taylor
Model Basin just outside Washington, D.C., where she continued work as a
programmer on UNIVAC #6.
368 Notes to Pages 86–90
38. Knuth, Sorting and Searching, 386. Holberton’s routine is described in U.S.

Naval Mathematics Advisory Panel, Symposium on Automatic Programming for Digital
Computers (Washington, DC, 1954): 34–39.
39. Eric Weiss, ed., Computer Usage—Fundamentals (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1969).
40. Holberton, interview in UNIVAC oral history conference, Smithsonian
Institution, May 17–18, 1990, p. 52; Smithsonian Institution Archives.
41. The most recent version, accepted by the International Standards Organiza-
tion in 1992, is called ‘‘Fortran 90,’’ (now spelled as a proper noun, no longer as
an acronym). A version of Fortran aimed at parallel, non-von Neumann
architecture computers, is also under development; it is presently called High
Performance Fortran. See Ian Stockdale, ‘‘Vendors, International Standards
Community Adopt Fortran 90,’’ NAS News (NASA Ames Research Center,
September 1992): 1–8.
42. Backus, ‘‘Programming in America.’’ Professor F. L. Bauer of the Technical
University of Munich, who was one of the developers of ALGOL, pointed out to
the author that many ALGOL compilers were also fast and efficient, so this, in his
view, was obviously not the sole reason for FORTRAN’s success.
43. Backus, ‘‘Programming in America,’’ 131.
44. The committee was called ‘‘CODASYL’’: Conference On DAta SYstems
Languages. It was not a committee in the normal sense of the word; actual
work on COBOL was done by two other committees that included representa-
tives of computer manufacturers and government agencies. See Jean Sammett,
Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1969), section V.3.
45. ‘‘One Compiler, Coming Up!’’ Datamation (May=June 1959): 15; also Saul
Rosen, ‘‘Programming Systems and Languages: a Historical Survey,’’ Proc. SJCC
25 (1964): 1–15.
46. The example is taken from Sammett, Programming Languages, 337.
47. The movie was released in 1968. In a later scene, HAL states that he was
created in Urbana, Illinois, which in 1968 was the location of an ambitious

supercomputer project known as ‘‘Illiac-IV.’’
48. Paul Ceruzzi, ‘‘Aspects of the History of European Computing,’’ Paper
presented at the 12th European Studies Conference, Omaha, NE, 8–10 October,
1987.
49. Grace Hopper, ‘‘Keynote Address,’’ in Richard L. Wexelblatt, ed., History of
Programming Languages (New York: Academic Press, 1981): 7–20.
50. Ibid.; see also Sammet, Programming Languages.
Notes to Pages 90–95 369
51. Sammet, Programming Languages, 11.
52. G. F. Ryckman, Proc WJCC 1960, 341–343; also William Orchard-Hays, ‘‘The
Evolution of Programming Systems,’’ IRE Proc. 49 (January 1961): 283–295.
53. The slash-asterisk command was designed by Larry Josephson, who later had
a second career as an underground disk jockey with the New York alternative
radio station WBAI. Larry Josephson, private communication to the author.
54. Sammet, Programming Languages, 205–215; Bob Rosin, personal communica-
tion, 23 June 1995.
55. The PL=I programming language, described later, was also a part of this
unifying effort; it was to replace COBOL for business, and FORTRAN for
scientific applications.
56. Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975).
57. See, for example, University of Michigan, College of Engineering, ‘‘Applica-
tions of Logic to Advanced Digital Computer Programming,’’ Notes for an
Intensive Course for the Engineer and Scientist, 1957 Summer Session. National
Air and Space Museum, NBS Collection.
58. Paul Ceruzzi, ‘‘Electronics Technology and Computer Science,’’ Annals of the
History of Computing, 10: 4 (1989): 257–275; also Louis Fein, ‘‘The Role of the
University in Computers, Data Processing, and Related Fields,’’ Communications,
ACM 2 (1959): 7–14.
59. Stanford University Archives, George Forsythe papers; also Donald E. Knuth,

‘‘George Forsythe and the Development of Computer Science,’’ Communications,
ACM 15: 8 (1972): 721–726.
60. Newell, Perlis, and Simon, letter to the editor, Science 157 (22 September,
1967): 1373–1374.
61. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd edition (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1981).
62. Newell, Perlis, and Simon, letter to the editor, op. cit., p. 1374.
63. Communications, ACM 11 (March 1968): 147.
64. Seymour V. Pollack, ‘‘The Development of Computer Science,’’ in Seymour
Pollack, ed., Studies in Computer Science (Washington, DC: Mathematical Associa-
tion of America, 1982): 1–51.
65. Ibid., 35.
66. Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, vol. 1: Fundamental
Algorithms (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1968). Knuth published volume 2 in
1969 and volume 3 in 1973; he has thus far not produced the remaining four
370 Notes to Pages 95–103
volumes. In a recent interview he expressed a hope that he would be able to
publish volume 4 (in three parts) in 2003, and volume 5 in 2008.
67. Communications, ACM 11 (March 1968): 147.
68. ‘‘Language Protection by Trademark Ill-advised,’’ Communications, ACM 11: 3
(March 1968): 148–149.
69. According to Mooers, in an interview with the author, the TRAC language
was ‘‘stolen’’ and issued, without restrictions, under the name ‘‘MINT’’—‘‘Mint Is
Not TRAC.’’
70. One person who agreed with Mooers was Bill Gates, who wrote to him
expressing sympathy and an interest in following Mooer’s crusade. The letter is
now among Mooers’s papers at the Charles Babbage Institute.
71. Peter Naur and Brian Randell, ‘‘Software Engineering; Report on a Confer-
ence Sponsored by the NATO Science Committee,’’ 7–11 October 1968
(Garmisch, Germany: NATO, 1969).

72. James Tomayko, ‘‘Twenty Year Retrospective: the NATO Software Engineer-
ing Conferences,’’ Annals of the History of Computing, 11: 2 (1989): 132–143.
73. Thomas J. Bergin and James (Jay) Horning, ‘‘Dagstuhl Conference,’’ Annals
of the History of Computing 19: 3 (1997): 74–76.
74. Franklin Fisher, James W. McKie, Richard B. Mancke, IBM and the U.S. Data
Processing Industry (New York: Praeger, 1983): 176–177.
75. David C. Mounce, CICS: a Light Hearted Chronicle (Hursely, UK: IBM, 1994): i.
76. Peter Salus, A Quarter Century of UNIX (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994);
UNIX will be discussed more fully later on.
77. Dennis M. Ritchie, ‘‘The Development of the C Programming Language,’’ in
Thomas J. Bergin Jr. and Richard G. Gibson Jr., eds., History of Programming
Languages—II (New York: ACM Press, 1996): 671–698.
78. Ibid., 673.
79. Rosen, ‘‘Programming Systems and Languages: a Historical Survey,’’ 12.
80. C. H. Lindsey, ‘‘A History of ALGOL-68,’’ ACM Sigplan Notices 28: 3 (March
1993): 97–132.
81. For example, there was an acrimonious debate among committee members
over how ALGOL-68 should handle the use of a comma to separate thousands
and a point for the decimal, or the opposite, as is common in Germany; for
example, 2,555.32 in Germany is written 2.555,32.
82. Nicholas Wirth, ‘‘Recollections about the Development of PASCAL,’’ ACM
Sigplan Notices 28: 3 (March 1993): 333–342.
Notes to Pages 104–107 371