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Nineteenth and early twentieth century American governments—local, state, and national—profoundly shaped diffusion of novel mathematical instruments. The federal government ran an office that judged what inventions were patentable and a legal system for those who defended or challenged patent rights. Governments at all levels employed inventors. Sometimes new laws required extensive calculations promoting invention and sale of computing instruments. Governments were customers for mathematical instruments ranging from teaching apparatus to adding and calculating machines to harmonic analyzers to tabulating machines. They not only bought goods, but set standards for what they would purchase. Government buyers also offered testimonials to businesses. From the 1890s, ant.itrust legislation led to some federal government oversight of corporations. Historians usually rely on documents to tell this story. This paper begins from objects—a few known only from patent descriptions, but most surviving in museum collections. This perspective complements rich existing accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports that the University of Southwestern Louisiana has donated to the Boston Computer Museum an extensive repository of microprogramming artifacts and documentation to the historical museum.

The article discusses the author's recollections about some essential details related to the development of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) in the U.S. He first heard the important features of ENIAC from a professor at Manchester University in England who had a wide knowledge on its numerical methods and applications. He first saw the machine during a visit at Moore School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was deeply influenced by its scale and extremely huge size in which it filled the whole room and weighted thirty tons. He regarded ENIAC as a wartime military project which was developed to meet the needs of the American soldiers.

James W. Cortada shares some of the stories from his time as a salesman at IBM, from 1974 to 1981, until he became an instructor at the IBM Sales School. His tales shed new light on IBM, its sales force, its customers, and the mainframe and data processing industries during the 1970s and 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Edward Feigenbaum, the recipient of the 2013 Pioneer Award, is one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence and has been one of its leaders for more than 50 years. He became aware of the birth of AI when he was an undergraduate at Carnegie Tech (later, Carnegie Mellon University). Continuing to graduate school there, he was mentored by Herbert Simon, and he also collaborated with Allen Newell. His career has taken him from Carnegie to the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, RAND, and the Pentagon. Feigenbaum has also authored and coedited several seminal AI books: Computers and Thought (1963), The Fifth Generation (1983), and the four-volume Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (1980s). In this interview, David Alan Grier and Feigenbaum talk about his career, his mentor Herbert Simon, and the development of AI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information about the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) which was developed by scientists J. Presper Eckert Jr. and John W. Mauchly. The UNIVAC was known as the first large electronic computer and the first to have removable and re-mountable magnetic tapes on its auxiliary storage. It has been used at the Planning Research Division of the U.S. Air Force as a method for designing more appropriate plans and speedy computation during the Korean War. In its operation, the UNIVAC system consisted a central processing unit, a duplex arithmetic unit, a thousand-word memory, and two 60-word buffers known as tape red and tape write.

This article focuses on Beatric Helen Worsley, Canada's female computer pioneer and her contribution to computer field. Worsley was a pioneering computer scientist and the first female in Canada to make significant contributions to the field. Beatrice Helen Worsley was born in Queretaro, Mexico, on October 18,1921. In 1938, she completed junior matriculation, and in 1939 graduated, with honors, senior matriculation. In September 1946, Worsley entered graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts in a one-year master's program of mathematics and physics. A skilled mathematician and unquestionably Canada's first female computer scientist, Worsely found a successful calling in a profession dominated by men.

Examines how first-generation computers were sold and purchased from 1954 to 1958 in the United States. Use of computers for clerical and accounting jobs by corporations; Occupations and departments that emerged around the computers; Discussion on data processing and the history of computing.

Discusses whether the early entry of universities in the United States (U.S.) in computing was a competitive advantage in academic computing. Discussion of the first three decades of computing at Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Universities of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Princeton; Advantages and disadvantages of being an early entrant; Implications of the emergence of computer science. INSET: Princeton years.

Argues that computers to exist and be adopted by businesses due to large and healthy United States economy. Impact of the use of computers for commercial applications in the United States economy; Post-World War II United States economy; Investment in computer technology and expenditures in related areas; Debate about the merits of the benefits of computerization.

After National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger ordered the National Security Council to adopt computers to improve its information-management capabilities in 1969, it employed the RAND Corporation, which championed its view of White House needs, and project manager Charles Joyce from the Department of Defense, who championed users' needs. The ensuing process illustrates how institutional constraints and resources have a powerful effect on technology adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]