Resources and Opportunities of the IEEE History Center and ETHW

The ieee history center opened in 1980, just as computers were becoming personal for people beyond the early adopters and the Computer Society signed its 44 000th member. Since then both organizations have expanded the ambit of their activities. The Center offers considerable resources for historians of computing: in free, online primary, and secondary sources, and funded opportunities and awards.

The History Center administers the Engineering and Technology History Wiki (ETHW, ethw. org). Currently enjoying two million visitors per year, this site acts as a repository for professional technical organizations, technologists, and researchers who want to upload and contribute relevant archival or primary documentation or articles. Over 50 first hand histories relating to “Computers and Information Processing” and submitted by individuals include memoirs by Allan Alcorn, IBM veterans, and Eleanor Ireland. Subjects range from working at Intel and NEC to creating early digital art and the MELVYL catalog. The site also hosts the IEEE Milestone Program, which includes recognition of numerous computer-related achievements around the world. Practitioners or historians seeking a stable archive at which they might place memories and historical materials they may have collected should consider using the ETHW.

In the opportunities domain, through its administration of the IEEE Life Members Fellowship (ieee.org/about/history-center/fellowship.html), the History Center has supported historians in computing. The US$25 000 grant, which helps underwrite a year of scholarship, has assisted 15 junior scholars since 1995 with their projects. Their names and research titles will be familiar to Annals readers, including Jacob Gaboury (“Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics”); Joy Lisi Rankin (“A People’s History of Computing in the United States”); Corinna Schlombs (“Productivity Machines: German Appropriations of American Technology from Mass Production to Computer Automation”); and Andrew Russell (“Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks”).

The Elizabeth & Emerson Pugh Young Scholar in Residence (ieee.org/about/history-center/internship.html) underwrites two months of research experience for promising scholars in the history of technology and engineering. The recipient helps with the Center’s projects connected to their own area of interest.

The Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize (ieee. org/about/history-center/prize-paper.html), formerly the IEEE Life Members’ Prize in Electrical History, honors the best paper in the history of electrotechnology published in a scholarly journal during the preceding year. Recent winners include Thomas Haigh and Mark Priestley, Gerardo Con Diaz, and Bernard Geoghegan. The recently instituted IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award (ieee.org/about/history-center/middleton-award.html) is for “a book in the history of an IEEE-related technology that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities toward a broad public audience.” Winners include Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman’s biography of Claude Shannon, A Mind at Play; Megan Prelinger’s Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age; and Walter Isaacson’s bestselling The Innovators.

More personally, I am the editor of the Proceedings of the IEEE’s Scanning our Past section (proceedingsoftheieee.ieee.org/instructions-for-authors/preparing-special-features/#SOP). Popular articles have included Nathan’s Brewer’s account of Rogue derivatives and Brian L. Stuart’s trilogy on simulating, programming, and debugging the ENIAC. In addition, Bernd Ullmann has written on Telefunken’s analog computers, Lillian Hoddeson et al. on Sanford Ovshinsky and cognitive computing, and Jana Horáková and Jiří Mucha on reconstructing the 1968 Computer Graphic exhibition. Generous donations by Life Member Dennis Shapiro have made these articles open access through IEEExplore (ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp). I am always looking for additional articles.

In short, the History Center is committed to responding to any of IEEE’s historical interests and there is much available to reward the technologist or researcher interested in the histories of computing. Sign up for the Center’s triannual Newsletter (ieee.org/about/history-center/newsletters.html) for updates about its activities and reviews of books and exhibits.