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The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

 specializing in the history of information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking.

The institute is named for Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer...

, the nineteenth-century English inventor of the programmable computer.

Activities

In addition to holding important historical archives, in paper and electronic form, its staff of historians and archivists conduct and publish historical and archival research that promotes the study of the history of information technology internationally. CBI also carries out and encourages research in the area and related topics (such as archival methods); to do this, it offers graduate fellowships and travel grants, organizes conferences and workshops, and participates in public programming. It also serves as an international clearinghouse of resources for the history of information technology.

Also valuable for researchers are its extensive collection of oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...

 interviews, nearly 400 in total. Oral histories with important early figures in the field have been conducted by CBI staff and collaborating colleagues. Owing to the poorly documented state of many early computer developments, these oral histories are immensely valuable documents. One author called the set of CBI oral histories "a priceless resource for any historian of computing." Most of CBI's oral histories are transcribed and available online.

The archival collection also contains manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

s; records of professional associations; corporate records (including the Burroughs corporate records and the Control Data corporate records, among many others); trade publications; periodicals; manuals and product literature for older systems, photographic material (stills and moving), and a variety of other rare reference materials.

It is now a center at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, and is located at its Twin Cities, Minnesota campus, where it is housed in the Elmer L. Andersen
Elmer L. Andersen
Elmer Lee Andersen was an American businessman, philanthropist, and the 30th Governor of Minnesota, serving a single term from January 2, 1961, to March 25, 1963, as a Republican.- Early life and education :...

 Library.

Research Resources

CBI has major archival research collections pertaining to these organizations:



In addition, CBI has collections of archival papers from many notable figures in computing:

  • Walter L. Anderson - http://purl.umn.edu/40553
  • Isaac L. Auerbach - http://purl.umn.edu/41372
  • Charles W. Bachman
    Charles Bachman
    Charles William "Charlie" Bachman is an American computer scientist, who spent his entire career as an industrial researcher rather than in academia...

     - http://purl.umn.edu/40732
  • Edmund C. Berkeley - http://purl.umn.edu/41378
  • Gertrude Blanch
    Gertrude Blanch
    Gertrude Blanch was an American mathematician who did pioneering work in numerical analysis and computation.Blanch was born Gittel Kaimowitz in Kolno, Russia , arrived in the United States as a child, and attended public schools in New York City. She spent fourteen years as a clerk, saving money...

     - http://purl.umn.edu/40853
  • John Day
    John Day (computer scientist)
    John D. Day is a computer scientist, an Internet pioneer, and a historian. He has been involved in the development of the communication protocols of Internet and its predecessor ARPANET since 1970s, and he was also active in the design of the OSI reference model...

     - http://purl.umn.edu/52604
  • Wallace John Eckert
    Wallace John Eckert
    Wallace John Eckert was an American astronomer, who directed the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University which evolved into the research division of IBM.-Life:...

     - http://purl.umn.edu/40635
  • Margaret R. Fox - http://purl.umn.edu/41420
  • Bruce Gilchrist
    Bruce Gilchrist
    Bruce Gilchrist is considered one of the notable figures in modern computing history.- Early life and education :Gilchrist was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England and attended King Edward VII School in Kings Lynn...

     - http://purl.umn.edu/41266
  • George Glaser - http://purl.umn.edu/41471




History

CBI was founded in 1978 by Erwin Tomash
Erwin Tomash
Erwin Tomash, is the co-founder of Dataproducts Corporation which specialized in computer technology, specifically printers. He is recognized for his early pioneering work with computer equipment peripherals, and is responsible for The Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellowship in the History of...

 and associates as the International Charles Babbage Society, and initially operated in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

.

In 1979, the American Federation of Information Processing Societies
American Federation of Information Processing Societies
The American Federation of Information Processing Societies was an umbrella organization of professional societies established on May 10, 1961 and dissolved in 1990...

 (AFIPS) became a principal sponsor of the Society, which was renamed the Charles Babbage Institute.

In 1980, the Institute moved to the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, which contracted with the principals of the Charles Babbage Institute to sponsor and house the Institute. In 1989, CBI became an organized research unit of the University.

See also

  • History of computing
    History of computing
    The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables...

  • History of computing hardware
    History of computing hardware
    The history of computing hardware is the record of the ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data....

  • History of operating systems
    History of operating systems
    The history of computer operating systems recapitulates to a degree the recent history of computer hardware.Operating systems provide a set of functions needed and used by most application programs on a computer, and the linkages needed to control and synchronize computer hardware...

  • History of the internet
    History of the Internet
    The history of the Internet starts in the 1950s and 1960s with the development of computers. This began with point-to-point communication between mainframe computers and terminals, expanded to point-to-point connections between computers and then early research into packet switching...

  • Internet governance
    Internet governance
    Internet governance is the development and application of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet...

  • Standards Setting Organization

Publications and Reprint Series

CBI Hosted publications (pdf files)

CBI--Tomash Reprint Series (of the original 16 volumes, only these select ones remain available):
  • Volume 1: The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer by Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler, and Stanley Gill
    Stanley Gill
    Professor Stanley Gill was a British computer scientist credited, along with Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler, with the invention of the first computer subroutine.-Early life, education and career:...

    ; (original 1951); reprinted with new introduction by Martin Campbell-Kelly
    Martin Campbell-Kelly
    Martin Campbell-Kelly is an English computer scientist based at the University of Warwick who has specialised in the history of computing.Campbell-Kelly is professor emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick. He is on the editorial board of the IEEE Annals of the...

    ; 198 pp.; illus; biblio; bios; index; ISBN 0-262-23118-2.
  • Volume 2: Babbage's Calculating Engines by H. P. Babbage (1889). New introduction by Allan G. Bromley; 8½" × 11"; 294pp.; illus; notes; biblio; ISBN 0-263-02200-1
  • Volume 3: Handbook of the Napier Tercentenary Celebration or Modern Instruments and Methods of Calculation edited by E. M. Horsburgh; (1914); New introduction by M. R. Williams; 8½" × 11"; 384 pp.; illus; notes; ISBN 0-262-08141-5
  • Volume 4: High Speed Computing Devices by the Staff of Engineering Research Associates
    Engineering Research Associates
    Engineering Research Associates, commonly known as ERA, was a pioneering computer firm from the 1950s. They became famous for their numerical computers, but as the market expanded they became better known for their drum memory systems. They were eventually purchased by Remington Rand and merged...

    ; (1950); New introduction by Arnold A.Cohen; 6" × 9"; 493 pp.; illus; biblio; bios; index; ISBN 0-262-08152-0
  • History of Binary and Other Nondecimal Numeration by Anton Glaser; (1981); 6" × 9"; 218 pp; illus.; index; ISBN 0-938228-00-5


CBI staff publication list

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
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