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The article reports that the English version of the virtual computer museum has been released by the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) in June 2006. There are two main components of the virtual museum including biographies of 68 computer pioneers in Japan and a chronological chart of 323 historical computers. The latter is classified into several computers like mainframes, supercomputers, small business computers, minicomputers, workstations, and personal computers. The first computer in Japan was developed by Ryoichi Yazu and it was a mechanical desktop calculating machine.

The article provides information about several congresses related to computing system, which include the 50th anniversary of the PC-1 parametron computer's birth that was held on March 26, 2008 at the Internet Initiative Japan Inc., the exhibit of 1950s computer at the Osaka University's Museum of Science and Technology in August 2007, and the series of workshops offered by the Software for Europe project that happened on January 21-24, 2008.

Information about several papers discussed at the 55th annual meeting of the History of Science Society of Japan on the history of Japanese computing from May 24-25, 2008 is presented. Topics include the development of Kyoto Daigaku Digital Computer I (KDC-I), the role of physicist Eiichi Goto in Japanese computing, and the research strategies of the Electrical Technology Laboratory (ETL). The symposium featured several historians including Chigusa Kita, Shunshi Koyama and Takushi Otani.

The article presents information on various events related to the computer industry in the U.S. Andrew Russell has been awarded the 2006-2007 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Fellowship. The Computer History Museum had a productive spring quarter of lectures, volunteer days, and hard work by staff to continue cataloging the largest collection of computer objects in the world. The highlight of the lecture series was "The Mouse That Roared: PDP-1 Celebration Event." An exhibition titled "History of Pattern Recognition," was held at the Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. The first speaker was Toshiyuki Sakai, professor emeritus of Kyoto University, who started the first laboratory on pattern recognition in the university.

This article is the second part of a three-part series, presenting an overview of events in International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. that preceded today's versatility in handling Far Eastern languages in the information technology arena. In Part 2, the authors describe the intricacies of character encoding, processing, and printing involved in IBM's successful efforts to develop the first commercial general Kanji computer system. Later, during this time frame, the first commercial Kanji system was introduced. IBM was also launching development of the first computerized newspaper publishing system to offer Kanji capability. While IBM Japan marketed the available Katakana features in the early 1960s, Kurt Hensch was appointed development-engineering advisor to IBM Asia Pacific Headquarters in 1963. Realizing that the Katakana features previously made available in Japan were only primitive and temporary solutions, Hensch's first priority was seeking approaches that would facilitate data processing with unrestricted availability of Kanji, using newly evolving technology and software.

The article reviews the exhibition on the works by Mori Ogai in October 2007 at the Museum of Literature in Kitakyushu, Japan.

The article informs that on April 20, 2005, the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan presented the 21st Japan Prize in the categories of information and media technology and cell biology to Makoto Nagao, a computer programmer. Nagao received the award for his pioneering contributions to natural language processing and intelligent image processing. Nagao led the research of machine translation and for the first time in the world, successfully developed a Japanese-to-English and an English-to-Japanese translation system for abstracts of scientific and technical papers. Nagao has proposed methods appropriate to the analysis of long and complex Japanese sentences, and has achieved extensive results in the field of context analysis. Since 1990, Nagao has made essential proposals regarding the ideal form of digital libraries that incorporate natural language and image processing technologies, including digital library system configurations, user interfaces, and network configurations. Nagao developed and opened Ariadne, one of the earliest digital library prototype systems.

The article reports on the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Senai Automatic Computer One (SENAC-1) at Tohoku University's Cyberscience Center in Sendai, Japan on November 14, 2008. It is stated that SENAC-1 is a large scale parametron computer for scientific and engineering use and started its operation in November 1958. SENAC-1 has dual arithmetic structure having two floating-point arithmetic units with a 40-bit mantissa and eight-bit exponent. Moreover, SENAC-1 consists about 9,600 parametrons and has a high-speed drum memory of 1,024 words.

In this article, the editor shares his experience of his trip to Japan whereby he mentions that this issue explores some of the issues that needed to be addressed in adapting the computer to Japan. Three articles, by Kurt Hensch and his colleagues, discuss the technical problems that had to be solved to allow IBM computers to handle Japanese characters. There was no easy solution, as the Japanese language could not be captured in a simple character set such as ASCII. Before jumping into the details of Japanese character sets, this issue begins with an article on plug-compatible computers by Shigeru Takahashi. Japanese companies were leaders in developing computers that used instruction sets from existing designs. These machines let users run software written for other brands of computers, as an activity that raised many new problems over software rights. Friedrich W. Kistermann about the Hollerith punched card machines of the 1900s. This is not an article about Japan, but it does deal with problems that are similar to those described in other articles in this issue.

This article begins a three-part series, presenting an overview of events in International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. that preceded today's versatility in handling Far Eastern languages in the information technology arena. Here, Part 1 analyzes the complexities and characteristics of the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, and other Far Eastern languages in the context of 1960's technologies and early IT products that emerged. Today, millions of people in China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand keep Internet and e-mail humming. They take it for granted that the system they are using came about automatically, along with the invention of the computer. Although the IBM 1401 Data Processing System in 1960 had soon become a bestseller in the western world, the implementation of national language requirements in East Asia was mandatory if the domestic market potential of non-English-speaking countries was to be fully exploited. This need was especially pronounced in Japan. During 1961, IBM Japan was trying to coordinate the development of a Katakana feature for the IBM 1401 in collaboration with the Product Development Laboratory of IBM Germany.

This article is the third part in a three part series, which describes the coordination of worldwide efforts in International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) that were launched in the 1970s to ensure implementation of Far Eastern language requirements with IBM products, in order that IBM would maintain its leading role in the information technology industry. Although the first emergence of computerized Kanji that IBM Japan developed in the early 1970s was a breakthrough, this progress in capabilities was limited and did not satisfy the entire Asian market. At the high end, newspaper-publishing systems that computerized Kanji were developed. However, these required a sizable amount of equipment and software at considerable expense, affordable only by large companies. The IBM 2245 Kanji printer, a first step for general-purpose products in 1971, could not adequately meet all market requirements for Kanji data processing. The small number of single dot pattern type font print positions, and the cumbersome data entry via punched cards, limited the chances for wider acceptance.

Highlights several events in the computer industry as of 2001. Details on the computing history exhibitions at the National Science Museum in Tokyo, Japan; Installation of the Ferranti Pegasus in the Computing Gallery of the Science Museum in London, England; Overview of the symposium held at the Konrad Zuse Center for Information Technology in Berlin, East Germany in May 2001 to inaugurate the rebuilding of Zuse's Z3 relay computer.

Presents a brief history of the Japanese computer industry before 1985. First stages from 1956 to 1960; Second stage from 1961 to 1970; Third stage from 1972 to 1979; Present stage from 1980 to 1985.

The article reports that the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) celebrates the 50th anniversary of Fuji Computer, the first Japanese electronic digital computer. In line with the occasion, the guild held an exhibit from March 7-9, 2006 during its 45th annual convention at Kogakuin University in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The presentation comprised a slideshow of major Japanese computers on six display monitors for each decade. Furthermore, the 2006 IEEE Computer Society President Deborah Cooper has extended her commendation to the President of IPSJ, Professor Yuichiro Anzai.

This Events & Sightings installment covers a range of recent events focusing on the history of computing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on an exhibition of computers and calculating devices at the National Science Museum in Tokyo, Japan. Almost a year ago the National Science Museum opened its new building, the second floor of which is dedicated to progress in science and technology. This exhibit showcases some Japanese inventions from the Edo period, from the 17th to the 19th century, and onward. As is widely known, Japan had a long tradition of using abacuses that they originally imported from China. In the Edo period, mathematicians used this calculation board and elaborated on the original calculation method, called Juuki. This exhibit lets visitors see the calculation boards used in those days, which would be informative for those who are interested in human computers. In the exhibit's fifth section, they also show some pioneer Japanese modern computing systems. For example, FUJIC--the first electronic computer to be operated in Japan--is on display. FUJIC was designed in 1956 to automate the calculations for the lens design process.

In 1957, Tarui Yasuo filed a patent application for the quadrupole transistor, which could be seen as an important step toward the integrated circuit. Likely, the financial and ideological need to develop indigenous devices in postwar Japan oriented Tarui's vision into a particular direction, which in turn obstructed him from following up on this technological trajectory and realizing the significance of his achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry's investments in computer technology development are well known, the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (NTT) also played an important role. A study of the development of NTT's information system called DIPS reveals NTT's influence on the Japanese computer industry and its early effort to promote software engineering in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]