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  • Events and Sightings
  • Mai Sugimoto (bio), Dag Spicer (bio), and David Walden (bio)

Making the History of Computing Relevant

On 17–18 June 2013, the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group (WG) 9.7, with the Science Museum and the Computer Conservation Society, held a conference at the director’s suite of the Science Museum in South Kensington, London (see Figure 1). The topic of the conference concerned how displays and descriptions of computing history in museums and archives can be relevant and understandable to the general public, which might not be familiar with the technological details of old computing machinery and its historical and cultural contexts. This is related to a shift from the technological determinist perspective to other perspectives, such as the socio historical contextual perspective, which has been discussed for several decades in the history of computing literature. This conference was also concerned with how to apply diverse perspectives in making displays for the public.

On 16 June, a preconference activity was held at the National Museum of Computing, and attendees came to see old computing machinery displayed in working order, including a rebuild of Colossus and several sets of mainframes.

During the two days of the conference at the Science Museum, the main topics of discussion included

  • • how to manage projects related to creating replicas, rebuilds, or simulations of old hardware and software;

  • • how to conduct “storytelling” based on such artifacts in museums;

  • • how these artifacts could be associated with education on the history of computing;

  • • how to conserve and display intangible digital heritage, including software and video games; and

  • • the kinds of issues present in the current digital archives.

There were 15 talks on the first day and 14 on the second, covering a range of subjects. The presentations were grouped into five topics:

  1. 1. The importance of storytelling in museums.

  2. 2. Spotlight on some key collections and their future plans.

  3. 3. Thoughts on expanding the audience for computing history in depth.

  4. 4. Spotlight on some research projects.

  5. 5. Integrating history with computer science education.

More than 100 participants attended the sessions, including museum curators, archive administrators, and academics. They came from countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The conference began with talks by Marc Weber from the Computer History Museum in the United States, Tilly Blyth from the Science Museum in London, and Arthur Tatnall, chair of IFIP WG 9.7 from Victoria University.

A number of talks discussed the present situation of displays, collections, and projects in museums or institutions. For example, Jochen Viehoff and Norbert Ryska spoke about exhibitions in the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Germany, Marina Smolevitskaya described the collections at the Polytechnic Museum in Russia, Delphine Jenart talked about the Mundaneum in Belgium, Julian Roder and Christian Burchard discussed the contents of the Konrad Zuse Internet Archive Project, Horst Zuse talked about how he reconstructed Konrad Zuse’s Z3, and Chris Avram and Barbara Ainsworth discussed the Monads project at Monash University in Australia.

Projects were also presented on intangible heritage. For example, Stuckey Swalwell Ndalianis described the Popular Memory Archive, a curated online repository of early Australian and New Zealand games. Tiia Naskali explained how she and her collaborator organized the Computer and Video Games Exhibition in Finland, and David Holdsworth from the University of Leeds discussed a software archive project and explained how the digital preservation of old software should be performed.

In particular, the practice of displaying old original computers, rebuilds, and replicas in the UK was presented in detail. Roger Johnson explained how the Computer Conservation Society is organized, and Chris Burton discussed the history of the replica exhibition of the University of Manchester’s Small-Scale Experimental Machine. Kevin Murrell described how the Dekatron Computer is displayed, and Ben Trethowan discussed the museum’s Independent Radar Investigation System. In addition, David Hartley and Andrew Herbert described the EDSAC Replica Project at the National Museum of Computing, which was undertaken after Maurice Wilkes’s death.

The participants engaged in enthusiastic discussions. The conference proceedings, titled Making the History of Computing Relevant, will be published in hardcover by Springer in...

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