Events and Sightings

IPSJ Information Processing Technology Heritage Program

The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) recently started the Information Processing Technology Heritage program to certify historical artifacts in order to promote the preservation of historical computers.

Mechanical calculators have been built in Japan since the early 1900s, and electronic computers were developed in the early 1950s. The first Japanese mechanical calculator Jido Soroban, or the Automatic Abacus (see Figure 1), was invented by Ryoichi Yazu in 1903. Approximately 200 of them were manufactured, but only one has been preserved. The first stored-program transistor computer ETL Mark III was built in 1956 at the Electrotechnical Laboratory, but today it only exist as memory elements. Mainframes as well as peripheral equipments manufactured before 1990 are quickly vanishing, and it is getting more difficult to see them as real objects.

Recognizing the importance of the history of computing, IPSJ organized the Special Committee for the History of Computing in 1981. Because it is difficult for an academic society such as the IPSJ to collect and keep real artifacts, the committee edited and published two books (in Japanese) on the history of Japanese computers—one gives the history before 1960 and the other from 1961 to 1980. A third book on the history from 1981 to 2000 will be published next year. In 2001, IPSJ set up a virtual computer museum on the society's webpages to collect and keep valuable historic information. This website now has 900 articles and 1,400 photos and is accessed 100,000 times per month.

Books and virtual museums are good for providing the information on the history of computing. However, in view of transferring facts about information technology to the future, it is insufficient only to write about them. It would be more desirable for an organization to collect and keep real objects together with relevant materials. The US and Europe have several such museums where historical computers and related objects have been carefully kept and displayed. Japan does not have a museum dedicated to computers, though the National Museum of Nature and Science plays a part of such a role. It is difficult to establish and run a private museum in Japan because land is expensive and the same tax rate as ordinary capital is applied to preserved historical artifacts. In 2006, IPSJ submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry to build a museum dedicated to computers, but it was not accepted.

Although there is no computer museum in Japan, some organizations preserve important historical computers. IPSJ initiated its Information Processing Technology Heritage program this year to cope with this difficult current situation and promote the preservation of historical computers step by step. The idea is to respect organizations and people who are making great efforts to preserve historical artifacts and encourage them to continue their efforts by providing preserved historical artifacts with heritage certificates. The heritage program will also certify organizations as satellite museums affiliated with IPSJ.

Figure 1.

The first Japanese mechanical calculator Jido Soroban, or the Automatic Abacus, was developed in approximately 1903. (Photo courtesy of National Museum of Nature and Science)

The Special Committee for the History of Computing established the guidelines for selecting heritage candidates. It concluded that a candidate should have one or more of the following features: unique or original technology, outstanding performance in a certain period, epoch-making in the history of information processing technology, contribution to create a new field of industry, a big technological effect on others, excellent inventions in manufacturing technology, Japanese or the world standard technology, unique Japanese technology (not found in overseas countries), the first or the oldest among existing artifacts, operational or in good condition, special originality in the design, and/or important educational value in succeeding information processing technology. Information processing technologies and systems could also be candidates. In this case, they should have greatly contributed to people's living conditions or helped create a new lifestyle or important phenomenon in the relation between information processing technology and society/culture. The heritage program includes hardware as well as software programs and relevant...