A Personal CyberMuseum: Documents, Photo Albums, Talks, and Videotapes about Computing History

Gordon Bell timelines for an overall computer history timeline of significant entities and events in Information Processing.

· Timeline of Computing History BC-2013. Computers, languages, semiconductors, inventions and the like. This timeline consisting of 8 parallel lines is organized around the principle functions of information processing as they affect use. The main line is computers for people. Other lines: computers for science and engineering, record keeping, communications and networking, computers for control, and the control element (algorithms, architectures, languages).

· Gordon Bell’s Computer History Timeline BC-2013 of 500 or so important events in the invention and evolution of the computer including processors, storage, semiconductors, computers, languages, people and more.

· Please review, add, comment, correct and return your feedback to me if you feel up to the task.

Note on Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) artifacts:

GBell's Cybermuseum for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) has artifacts, books, brochures, clippings, manuals, memos, memorabilia, photos, posters, presentations, etc. relating to DEC.
Family Tree of Digital's Computers Poster created by Gordon Bell in 1980 showing the evolution of all of all computer models and times they were introduced since 1960.
Gordon's Personal View of the Origins of Personal Computing from a Digital Equipment Corporation perspective. PowerPoint presentation (4 MB, sans video and audio clips) given at the Vintage Computer Fair, Santa Clara, CA, 9 September 1998.
Gordon Bell Interview by David Allison, head of the Computing Collection at the Smithsonian, in the Summer of 1995, with updates and corrections in June 2000. This material covers a period of the author's life that goes beyond Digital.

Documents of historical interest that have been scanned

Jay W. Forrester response to Gordon Bell email query, May 2011 regarding the Wang "Pulse transfer controlling devices" patent for shift registers and the Forrester “Multicoordinate digital information storage device" invention of Core Memory.
Hollerith's Original Patent Application, January 1889.
Computer Generations Booklet created by Gordon Bell in 1975 to accompany a display of computing artifacts in the lobby of Building 12, Digital's headquarters.
Family Tree of Digital's Computers Poster created by Gordon Bell in 1980 showing the evolution of all of all computer models and times they were introduced since 1960.
Computer Museum Poster of Pre-computing Generations created by Gordon Bell in 1980 showing a progression of various computing devices and technologies.
Computer Museum Memories Poster showing various memory and storage devices.
Computer Museum "Building Blocks of AI" Poster of a quilt created by Penny Nii that has the "fathers of AI".
Ardent Price versus Performance of Supercomputers Poster in 1988.
Ardent "Foundations of Supercomputing" Timeline Poster giving the timeline of computer classes and technologies till 1988.
Microprocessor Poster, 25 years of Microprocessor evolution. 2.17 MB jpg.
CDC 8600 Manual, preliminary 8600 reference manual, Control Data Corporation.
CDC 8600 Patent No. 3833889, dated September 3, 1974.
Adams Associates Computer Characteristics Quarterly, dated 1967, scanned and contributed by Ed Thelen. This quarterly contains summaries for all commercial computers at the time.
IBM Reference Manual for the IBM 224 Card Punch and IBM 26 Printing Card Punch, dated October 1965, scanned and contributed by Ed Thelen.
Ethernet Blue Book, 5MB PDF file of Ethernet specifications from September, 1980.
Ethernet Blue Book, Ethernet specifications in TIF format.
Ethernet Seminar, Ethernet Press Seminar held at the World Trade Center on February 10, 1982, in TIF format.
The complete Ethernet Announcement by Bell (Digital), Noyce (Intel), and Liddle (Xerox) slides and script (PDF 7MB) was made in New York City on February 10, 1982 by the DIX group, followed by announcements in Amsterdam, and London. Note Gordon's presentation states: "the network becomes the system"... Can you recall a similar mantra that the late, departed SUN Microsystems later appropriated?

Digital Equipment Corporation Books

Bell, C. G., C. Mudge, J. McNamara, COMPUTER ENGINEERING, Digital Press 1978. At this site.
Bell, Grason, Newell, DESIGNING COMPUTERS AND DIGITAL SYSTEMS USING PDP-16 REGISTER TRANSFER MODULES, Digital Press, September 1972. At this site.

Papers and Reports

· Bell, C. Gordon STARS: The Rise and Fall of Minicomputers IEEE Global History Network, posted 22 January 2013. This paper was written with the co-operation of the IEEE GHN editors and editorial policies e.g. format, word count. The importance of the minicomputer’s contribution to personal computing and networking were significant-- minis pioneered apps that became completely stand-alone industries. The paper describes how almost 100 companies came into existence doing this era (1965-1985) based on LSI technology, an Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) tiered market structure for creating new applications in real time control, communication switching, user interface, and smaller scale computation and record keeping for business and word processing.

· Bell, G. “Out of a Closet: The Early Years of The Computer [X]* Museum”. Technical Report. MSR-TR-2011-44. This technical report was written for Professor Brian Randell’s 75th Festschrift. The 2011 opening at the Computer History Museum of the world’s largest and most complete physical and cyber exhibit of computing history marks the sixth stage of a public museum’s evolution, which began in 1975 with a closet-sized exhibit in a Digital Equipment Corporation building, migrating to The Computer Museum, Boston. In 2011, it lives in a 119,000 square foot public home plus its artifact storage facility. This chance/luck driven evolution of an institution is due to the dedication and leadership of a few people who persuaded hundreds of others that the endeavor was worthwhile and needed their support. They would not let it die! Behind nearly every artifact, exhibit, and pioneering effort is a story that the museum is dedicated to understand and tell. This is the story leading to the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, Ca. The heroes in the story are Ken (Olsen), Gwen (Bell) and Len (Shustek). Ken was a critical, seminal founder and supporter from the early 1970s. Gwen was its main keeper from 1979 till 1998. Len picked up the torch in 1994.

The Computer Museum Report, Winter 1983. A Companion to the Pioneer Timeline, with talks, by their builders about the Bell Labs Model 1 Complex Calculator; Zuse Z1 and Z3; Atanasoff-Berry, ABC; Colossus; ENIAC; EDVAC: IAS Computers; EDSAC; Manchester Mark I; Pilot ACE; NBS SEAC and SWAC; MIT Whirlwind.
The Computer Museum Reports. Annual Reports, and First Brochure on the Computer Museum Project are contained in this PDF file of about 100 Mbytes and covers 1975, 1980-1998 when the museum moved to Silicon Valley as the Computer History Museum. This compendium is posted as a reference for a number of talks by computer pioneers from Atanasoff to Zuse.
The Revolution Yet to Happen, ACM2047.doc (300K or about 7K words) is an invited book chapter commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery by Jim Gray and I. We posit the next platforms, interfaces and networks as a framework for new kinds of computers e.g. Do What I Say, Body Area Nets, and Guardian Angels.
The next 50 years: More Change Than Anyone Can Imagine is a paper that speculates about future micros. It was published in the Microprocessor Report, August 1996 or it can be read Future Micros.doc (150K) .
CyberAll has stimulated interest in a CyberMuseum, as a part of The Computer Museum History Center located at Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA. (see also extended bio regarding the museum).
My thoughts on the merits of a Cyberspace versus a Meatspace (Physical) Computer history Museum were written in the Spring of 2002 as a Trustee for the Computer history Museum using a multi-dimensional framework that allows trustees, members, supporters, and others to understand their own priorities in regard to the construction of such a museum. Fundamentally, it comes down to the cost to maintain a meatspace presence (building and exhibits) to attract large crowds and financial support versus a more modest place that will preserve and present artifacts to a worldwide audience using WWW, with minimal ability to exhibit and explain artifacts.

PowerPoint Albums and Talks of Computing History

Laws that Govern the Computer Industry and Computer Class formation. PowerPoint Presentation sans script. This is a working outline of a book that Jim Gray and I have talked about writing by perhaps 2001. We have collected a score of Laws (e.g. Moore's, Metcalfes's, Bill's, Nathan's) that describe the computer industry and market.
Internet 1, 2, & 3. Past, present, and future. Talk and PowerPoint with scripts, given April '95 InternetWorld html Talk with script or PowerPoint Internet.ppt (250K). This talk gives some comments on the evolution starting with ARPAnet.
Supercomputing (t): A Photo Chronology A PowerPoint album (7.2 MB) with various supercomputer photos and specifications, chronicling the evolution of computing starting before the computer and continuing to 2000. Click to view the talk in your browser.
Predicting Future Telecom Services and Lack Thereof Bellcore Conference (Competing in the Millennium) 5 May 1998
PowerPoint Presentation sans script Talk with Bob Lucky about the future challenges for all telecom carriers e.g. LECs, CLECs, IECs, IXCs. This includes why phone guys hate computers guys, why computer guys hate phone guys, and why no one likes cable guys.
Six Challenges for Future Computing. PowerPoint Presentation sans script. Presented at the New Paradigms for Using Computers aka New Uses for the PC Workshop at IBM Research, Almaden, CA, on 16 July 1998. Also, given to INRIA October 1998
Manchester University 50th Anniversary Keynote PowerPoint Presentation sans script. This conference celebrated the 50th anniversary, 21 June 1948, of the first stored program operation at Manchester University on their "Baby" computer. My talk recalls the various contributions to computing at Manchester, including the discovery of virtual memory, memory hierarchies, and the one-level store.
Gordon's Personal View of the Origins of Personal Computing from a Digital Equipment Corporation perspecive. PowerPoint presentation (4 MB, sans video and audio clips) given at the Vintage Computer Fair, Santa Clara, CA, 9 September 1998.

Gordon Bell Perspectives and Memoirs on Significant Computer Pioneers

GBell's perspectives on Seymour Cray's contributions to Computing. Talk and Script in html and PowerPoint. This talk was presented at the University of Minnesota Cray lecture Services, 10 November 1997. The html presentation contains about 90 slides with photos of various diagrams and photos of all of the "Cray" computers. PowerPoint slides with text of the talk is about 2 Mbytes and can be downloaded for reading.
Henry Burkhardt, III passed away on the 9th of August 2000. A memorial service was held on 16 September. I was notified by his son John. This note includes his obituary in the Springfield Times, a very nice recollection by his baby brother, Bob, and my own comments.

Netshow Videos and Videotapes

A short (5 min.) video on the Life of Seymour Cray is provided by Cray Research/SGI at 28.8Kbps and 300Kbps.
Computer Pioneers (Atanasoff, Grosch, Hopper, Stibitz and Zuse) and Pioneer Computers Videotapes (ENIAC to EDVAC, with Burks, Eckert, Mauchly, and Wilkes) are two 50 minute videotapes using original film and video that The ACM, The Computer Museum, and Gwen Bell and I produced. They are available from the ACM and The Computer Museum.
The Laws of Prediction. Netshow Talk given at the ACM97 Conference, San Jose, CA, March 3-5, 1997. All of the ACM97 Talks are at http://research.microsoft.com/acm97.
On the Future of Computers. Netshow Video @28.8 Kbps. This 1972 videotaped lecture was given at M.I.T. and describes a model for future computers, including computer classes and the prediction of new types of computers.
History of Supercomputers PowerPoint talk and one hour Video of the talk was given at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on 24 April, 2013 .wmv . Abstract: Since my first visit to Livermore in 1961 and seeing the LARC, recalling the elegance of the 6600, and just observing this computer class evolution have been high points of my life as an engineer and computing observer. Throughout their early evolution, supercomputer architecture “trickled down” in various ways for use with other computers. In the mid 1990s the flow reversed when large computers became scalable and constructed from clusters of microprocessors. Unlike the two paths of Bell’s Law that account for the birth, evolution, and death of other computer classes e.g. minicomputers, http://ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/STARS:Rise_and_Fall_of_Minicomputers supercomputers have doubled in performance every year for the last 50 years just by building larger structures. While computer performance is the first order term to track their high performance, many other technologies e.g. FORTRAN, LINPACK, government funding policy, and applications have contributed to the extraordinary progress. This talk traces a trajectory and contributors to the history of supercomputers class.

Gordon Bell Biographical Material including Interviews, etc.

Gordon Bell Interview by David Allison, head of the Computing Collection at the Smithsonian Museum, in the Summer of 1995, with updates and corrections in June 2000.
House of Business Interview, October 2000 Issue, contains a few high points about working at home with photographs of my house in Los Altos, CA showing various computing artifacts that have been collected over the last three decades.

Gwen and Gordon Bell Artifacts Collection

Computing Artifacts. Over 300 computing artifacts collected by Gwen and Gordon Bell.
Book Collection. Collection of rare and historical books collected by Gwen and Gordon Bell.

Books

These books were encoded at Carnegie-Mellon University and hosted at their Universal Library http://www.ulib.org/ . With the exception of High Tech Ventures, the books are out of print and unavailable.

Bell C. G., A. Newell, COMPUTER STRUCTURES: READINGS AND EXAMPLES, McGraw-Hill, 1971. At this site.
Bell, Grason, Newell, DESIGNING COMPUTERS AND DIGITAL SYSTEMS USING PDP-16 REGISTER TRANSFER MODULES, Digital Press, September 1972. At this site.
Bell, C. G., C. Mudge, J. McNamara, COMPUTER ENGINEERING, Digital Press 1978. At this site.
Siewiorek, D., C. G. Bell, A. Newell, COMPUTER STRUCTURES: PRINCIPLES AND EXAMPLES, McGraw-Hill, 1982.
Bell, C. Gordon, John E. McNamara, HIGH TECH VENTURES: THE GUIDE TO ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS, Addison-Wesley, 1991. At this site. This book is available in hard copy from Addison-Wesley. It is put here for viewing and not for downloading and printing to circumvent the purchase of a book. Hard copies should be purchased from the publisher.

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