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Lady Gaga at the M.I.T. Museum: Icon meets Icon

July 2, 2010 by hightechhistory

The always mesmerizing Lady Gaga, in Boston for a couple of concerts on her “Monster Ball” tour, stopped by the M.I.T. Museum on Wednesday, June 30 to visit the Polaroid camera archive the museum recently received. In January, Lady Gaga became the re-made company’s Creative Director. At Wednesday’s event, Polaroid’s President, Scott Hardy, said “The products developed with Lady Gaga are very much focused on instant imaging and video technology … they’re going to remain very true to the heritage of Polaroid, but with a digital twist.” A new line of Polaroid and “Gaga co-branded” products will be introduced in stores in November.

Lady Gaga, who did not speak with reporters, posed for her own Polaroid photo, which will become part of the 73-year old archive, comprising over 10,000 items and containing such noteworthy rarities as Polarized glasses from the 1939 World’s Fair, original newsprint sketches by Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land, an historic bellows camera the size of a filing cabinet, as well as examples of Land-designed camera prototypes. It is scheduled to go on exhibition in 2013.

As Yahoo Finance  noted in a June 30 story, “Lady Gaga’s recent appointment as Polaroid’s Creative Director is the first of many corporate objectives toward developing new and exciting products – introducing Polaroid to a new generation. Earlier today, Lady Gaga presided over a product design and development session for future Polaroid products. Today’s session is a milestone in the road to developing Lady Gaga’s co-branded Polaroid products that blend fashion, technology and photography.”

The defunct company was acquired by Minnetonka, Minnesota based PLR IP Holdings following Polaroid’s bankruptcy in 2001 –  and joins a long line of  brands that have made Phoenix-like revivals on the wings of “retro-chic.”

With all the force of a public relations tsunami, Lady Gaga’s own iconic brand will likely bring in a more youthful and style-conscious following for Polaroid’s return. And it is not inconceivable that November’s Polaroid products rollout could rival the hysteria of recent Apple product launches. I think even the late Edwin Land himself might have managed a smile had he been at this event.

-Chris Hartman

Lady Gaga and Polaroid at M.I.T. - courtesy, Polaroid

 

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Firsthand Perspectives from a Vanishing Age

June 21, 2010 by hightechhistory

One of the most important gifts one generation can leave to another is its history. The firsthand recollections of those who have lived full and productive lives have much to teach those who follow them, and in Stuart Lutz’ The Last Leaf: Voices of History’s Last-Known Survivors, there is a wealth of such recollections. 

Lutz, whose own background is as a dealer of rare manuscripts and documents, spent several years conducting interviews with nearly forty individuals whose associations offer unique insight into historically important events. Among the individuals highlighted are the last Union and Confederate Civil War widows; the last survivor of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire; the last Medal of Honor recipient for heroism at Pearl Harbor, and the last surviving passenger of the sunken ship Lusitania. Uniformly, these are accounts steeped in humility, in which the subjects tend not to focus on themselves, but rather on the events that they helped shape, and vice-versa. 

Among these biographies are three of interest to enthusiasts of high-tech history and innovation, included in “Part 3: Witnesses to Technological Innovation.” Arthur Burks, whom Lutz calls the “Last Major Designer of the ENIAC, the First Electronic General-Purpose Computer,” was a colleague of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, the two major figures behind the development and construction of the ENIAC computer. The ENIAC was designed in response to the U.S. military desiring a computer to calculate artillery trajectories. 

Burks, who was born in 1915 in Duluth, Minnesota, was the son of a high school math teacher. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1941, and later was encouraged by a friend to take a government-supported course for math and physics students at the University of Pennsylvania – where he met Eckert and Mauchly. In 1943, Burks began working for the Eckert and Mauchly lab, which had a government contract to build the ENIAC. Burks’ job was to diagram circuits to calculate artillery trajectories, as well as being the only one authorized to check the ENIAC’s circuits. The computer contained eighteen thousand vacuum tubes, and so it was a huge job. But Burks never doubted that they would be successful. 

In February of 1946, Burks introduced the ENIAC to the public. Shortly thereafter, the mathematician John von Neumann offered him a job at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Burks came back to Michigan later that year and became a professor of both philosophy and computer science and remained there until his passing in 2008. 

Pem Farnsworth was the widow of Philo Farnsworth – the man widely credited with innovating the modern television. Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born in a log cabin near Beaver, Utah, August 19, 1906. He was mechanically gifted from an early age, and apparently came up with a variation of the television idea when he was only fourteen. 

In addition to discussing the technology of his invention, Mrs. Farnsworth talked in detail about the competition and animosity between her late husband and the head of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), David Sarnoff. Dr. Vladimir Zworkin, a Westinghouse engineer working at the same time as Farnsworth, applied for a patent for the television in 1923 (he received it in 1938).  About 1930, Sarnoff gave Zworkin his own laboratory, where Zworkin continued to improve the technology. By that time, it was becoming understood that there was great money to be made in television, and this led to a patent infringement lawsuit Farnsworth filed against Zworkin in 1934. Farnsworth prevailed, and in 1936, an appeals court upheld the decision. 

In 1939, an “unhappy” Sarnoff signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Farnsworth, and later that year, the public was introduced to the technology at the World’s Fair in New York. Pem Farnsworth states that after that time, Sarnoff went to great lengths to erase her husband from the history books. Mrs. Farnsworth, who never received any royalties for her husband’s invention, stated that her husband feared a protracted war with RCA, and that by the time it was resolved, the patent rights, good for seventeen years, would have expired. 

Pem Farnsworth, who passed in 2006, had been made a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and in 2002 was invited to the Emmy Awards where she met Thomas Sarnoff, the son of David. Persuaded by others, she decided to go so it did not appear she was holding any grudges. 

She mentioned that her late husband’s favorite television moment was watching the moon landing. He had said that seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon “made it all worthwhile.” ln fact, according to Mrs. Farnsworth, her husband had always wanted to go into space, and never gave up that dream until the last six months of his life. 

In 1999, Time magazine did a retrospective on the century’s greatest scientists and thinkers, and alongside profiles of Einstein, Salk, the Wright brothers and Sigmund Freud, they included Farnsworth’s forgotten tale, nothing that “we ought not to let the century expire without attempting to make amends.”    

Within that same 1999 issue of Time, Thomas Alva Edison resided at the very top of the list of those prominent scientists and thinkers. Robert Halgrim, who met Edison as a boy, is mentioned by Lutz as the last man alive to work with him. 

Edison was born in Ohio in 1847 and later moved to Michigan. At about the age of fifteen, the precocious student became the manager of a telegraph office, which inspired him to create his first invention, a transmitter and receiver for an automatic telegraph. By twenty-one, he had invented his first commercially successful invention, a stock ticker. The forty-thousand dollars he received for the sale of this invention paved the way for his relocation to Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he created a lab. 

Robert Halgrim, born in Humboldt, Iowa in September of 1905, met Edison in Fort Myers, Florida around 1920, at the movie theatre Halgrim’s father owned there. Edison would bring his family in for private showings, and the young Halgrim would often show the films. During the 1924 Christmas season, Edison brought his grandchildren to Fort Myers. They needed someone to be a teacher and nanny for them, and so Edison asked the head of the local Boy Scout troop for a recommendation. Halgrim was recommended, wound up traveling back-and-forth between Fort Myers and Menlo Park, and eventually came to be regarded as a member of the Edison family. Edison even paid for Halgrim to attend Cornell University. 

After three years of college, Halgrim became Edison’s personal assistant, and remained so until Edison’s death. Halgrim remembered Edison as someone who was not overly impressed by money – that he typically used money he made to help underwrite new inventions and had a genuine desire to improve things for mankind. Edison was held in great esteem by other prominent businessmen and inventors of the era – including the rubber manufacturer Harvey Firestone (for whom Edison established rubber factories) and auto maker Henry Ford. In fact, according to Halgrim, Ford named three of his cars after Edison: the Model  T for “Thomas,” the Model A for “Alva,” and the Edsel for “Edison.” 

After Edison passed, his widow asked Halgrim to be curator of their winter home, which was being converted into a museum. Halgrim, and later his son, both served in that capacity. And when Henry Ford sold his home to the city of Fort Myers, the combination of their homes created what was to become one of the biggest attractions in the entire region. 

In summing up his thoughts about “the greatest inventor,” Halgrim recalls that Edison created 1,087 different inventions, and that there wasn’t a thing he wasn’t interested in. Virtually everything about our daily lives is dependent on his inventions – the electric foremost among those – though Halgrim adds sadly that it was a shame “he kept all of his knowledge to himself, so no one could carry on his thoughts and produce any of the things he made. When he died, it all went with him.” 

Other biographies in this section explore the invention and development of radio technology, as well as one of the last physicists present at the “first controlled nuclear reaction.” Taken together, these anecdotes provide a wealth of what one could call “last firsts”; that is, the last (or among the last) living persons present at the creation or the first appearance of a technological touchstone. The Last Leaf is an important book for those who want to understand what drives inventors – from those who lived with them.

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Review: The Tyranny of E-Mail (The 4,000 Year Journey to Your Mailbox)

June 4, 2010 by hightechhistory

In his book “The Tyranny of E-Mail,” author, John Freeman, has researched how 4,000 years of communication and technological breakthroughs have lead us to e-mail, a form of electronic communication that we can’t get away from.  Once broadband communication arrived, e-mail became the world’s most convenient communication tool.

Here are some facts about e-mail from Freeman’s book:

* The first e-mail was sent less than 40 years ago
* In 2007, 35 trillion messages were shot back and forth through 1 billion PCs
*  By 2011, there will be 3.2 billion e-mail users
* The average corporate worker receives > 200 e-mails per day and spends 40% of his/her time on e-mail each day
* Information overload is a $650 billion drag on the U.S. economy every year
* The tone of an e-mail is misunderstood 50% of the time

The History of E-Mail

Freeman quotes J.C.R. Licklider, an engineering professor at MIT and first director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency from a paper entitled “Man-Computer Symbiosis” where he wrote ” The hope is that in not too many years, human brians and computing machines will be coupled…tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.”  Fifty years later, Freeman concludes that the day has arrived because to read an e-mail you have to be joined to a machine.

When Samuel Morse sent the first telegram in May 1844, the message was “What hath God  wrought.”  When the first e-mail was sent out by Ray Tomlinson using the @ symbol, it contained a random series of letters and numbers.  Or as Freeman writes: “In other words:  gibberish.  He just wanted to see if it would arrive and didn’t bother to type anything providential.”

The Affect on E-Mail on Us

Freeman proves in his book that we have “started reverse engineering our brains for speed, as opposed to mindfullness.”  He goes on to write that “Empirical evidence is flooding in regarding the ways that screen-based reading, which has grown from e-mail, is changing the way we read generally.  Eye-tracking studies have shown that people increasingly tend to leapfrog over long blocks of text.”

With handheld devices that give us 24/7 access to e-mail, there is pretty much no where that people do not pause to check it.  There is no downtime any more.  In fact, the word “crackberry” was Webster’s New World College Dictionary’s 2006 word of the year.  Freeman writes that we work in a climate of constant interruption.  Multi-tasking is a way of life that probably isn’t going to change back to the way things used to be when messages were sent by carrier pigeon.  In his last chapter “Don’t Send” Freeman offers some tips on how you can take back control of your in-box and your life.

Conclusion

This book was written to make you pause and think about what has happened to your life since you became continously available to others via e-mail.  It’s worth a read.  Especially the last chapter.  Think about this quote that begins the “Don’t Send” chapter.

“I’ve been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an e-mail address.  I’d used e-mail since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of e-mail is plenty for one lifetime.”  — Don Knuth, Stanford University

About This Book

Published by Scribner in October 2009.  It’s hardcover - 256 pages.  Cost is $25.00 (U.S.)

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Dr. Fritz Sennheiser, electronics pioneer, dies at 98

May 23, 2010 by hightechhistory

Dr. Fritz Sennheiser, founder of the international electronics company that bears his name, died this past Monday (May 17) at 98. The official press release from the Sennheiser Group states his “biography as a developer and entrepreneur was indeed one of the most remarkable careers in Germany.”

Though he first became enamored of radio technology as an 11 year old boy – at which time he built his own receiver from simple and readily available components – he had another passion: landscape gardening. He actively pursued this as a career; however, upon graduating from grammar school in 1932, the dreadful state of the economy revealed little demand for such a skill. So he instead pursued his “second love,” enrolling in Berlin’s Technical University, where he studied electrical engineering with an emphasis in telecommunications.

At the Heinrich Hertz Institute, where he wrote his dissertation, he worked as a research assistant with Dr. Oskar Vierling, where he helped design and implement the ”Grösstonorgel”:  a vacuum tube oscilator-based organ which was used at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. (Vierling, for his part, was an important member of the Institute, which was responsible for most of the intensive activity in electronic music and musical instruments in Germany during the 1930s). This organ was, in actuality, a modified grand piano which formed a reverberation unit that made the piece of music played sound as if it were being played in a huge church.

In 1938, when Prof. Vierling was offered a chair at the Technical University of Hanover, Sennheiser helped him set up the Institute for Radio Frequency Technology and Electroacoustics. Shortly after, during World War II, Sennheiser worked in the field of crytography, in the radio transmission of coded messages. Even after he left the Institute and became a successful businessman, Sennheiser maintained close links with the academic world (in both teaching and research) as an honorary professor at the University of Hanover until 1980.

Immediately following World War II, Sennheiser risked a new beginning in the city of Wennebostel, where he founded the “Laboratorium Wennebostel” or “Labor W” and brought in seven colleagues from the Institute. Tensions between Sennheiser’s venture and an Allied (British) telecommunications unit were great – to the point where Sennheiser’s keys were confiscated from him and a sign had been placed on their facility restricting employees’ entrance on penalty of death. But having a spare set of keys, Sennheiser instead opted to take the sign down, and he and his colleagues started work.

The first products the new lab produced were valve (tube) voltmeters, which were sold to Siemens in Hanover. Siemens was pleased and began placing orders for further measuring equipment. With news of their high quality products spreading, Sennheiser’s group was commissioned by them to build a replica of a dynamic microphone, the DM 1.  As Labor W began to gain deeper knowledge of the technology, they were able to eventually offer Siemens a new microphone, the MD 2, which was to be the first in a long line of Sennheiser microphones. Radio stations, with high quality demands, became an important customer base.

The successful MD 2 microphone was quickly followed by the MD 3 (also known as the “invisible microphone” for its tiny size), and in 1951, the company launched the MD 4, which because of is larger size and virtually indestructible construction, became known by its main constituency (marketplace stallholders) as the “bug crusher.” 1953 saw the launch of the MD 21, which had become something of a legend as the microphone of choice for reporters, and notable personalities such as President John F. Kennedy, and Louis Armstrong.

Sennheiser MD 21 microphone

1956 saw the introduction of the revolutionary MD 82 “tele-microphone,” which permitted the recording of sound from a distance with pin-point accuracy.

In 1958, Labor W changed its name to “Sennheiser” – in part because of the growth of the company, but also in because of a report from the company’s Australian sales partner claiming that the Australian Prime Minister refused to speak into a Sennheiser microphone because he assumed that “Labor W” meant it belonged to the opposition Labor Party.

Though by 1958, the company was involved in a more diverse array of electronics products, Sennheiser finally returned to its core business of wireless technology. In 1957, a German TV personality, having gotten tangled up in the wires of his Sennheiser microphone one time too many, proceeded to grab a pair of scissors and cut the wire - and managed to carry on with the show without missing a beat! It was a good bit of free publicity for a company at the forefront of wireless electronics. Their microphones offered an added benefit for TV in that their high density allowed wider camera shots in which the speaker didn’t need to be in close proximity to the microphone. Hollywood soon came calling and Sennheiser became the standard for the film industry. This important contribution to film resulted in Fritz Sennheiser being awarded the 1987 “Scientific and Engineering Award” by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences” for the MKH 816 shotgun microphone.

In 1960, Sennheiser achieved a further milestone with the MD 421 studio microphone. Apart from offering outstanding sound quality, this “all-rounder” for speech and vocals was exceptionally robust. This microphone is also still part of today’s product range and is the microphone of choice for radio networks.

The World’s First Open Headphones
Sennheiser once said, “Our engineers have always been given a lot of freedom. They are allowed to give free rein to their creative ideas, no matter how crazy they might seem. Often, it is these very ideas that result in the best developments and the best products. Any reservations expressed by financial managers who first of all had an eye on profit were thus reliably dispersed. After all, a company doesn’t only sell products but primarily sells ideas.”

It was this philosophy of Fritz Sennheiser’s that enabled the company to develop and patent the world’s first open headphones. While playing around, one engineer discovered that headphones – which at the time were all bulky, closed models – sounded better when the ear-pieces were open. The result was the HD 414, which even today is at the top of the bestseller list for headphones. “The success of the HD 414 came as quite a surprise, and when manufacturers from all over the world started to sign licensing agreements with us for our patent on the “open headphones”, things really started to get interesting”, said Fritz Sennheiser.

Sennheiser HD414 "Open" headphones

During the 1970s, there was a focus on globalization of the company. Their diverse and established sales force had succeeded to the point where 40% of the company’s revenue resulted from abroad.

In the meantime, work went on in further perfecting wireless microphone technology: noise reduction systems, Diversity receivers and miniaturization made Sennheiser wireless technology the star on all stages. Musicals in particular benefited from the inconspicuous microphone technology. In 1975, wireless sound also became available for the end user, as Sennheiser launched the prototype of cordless headphones that used infrared transmission. At the same time, professional microphone technology became affordable for home use with the introduction of the electret condenser microphone. 

“Money – just figures to calculate with”
Ever since he had founded the company, Fritz Sennheiser considered its independence to be one of the most important values. Therefore, he consistently turned down offers of takeovers or partnerships. “For me, money was always just figures to calculate with.” The company remained financially independent, invested only what its capital allowed it to, and enjoyed sound growth from its own resources. The final decision to remain a family company was taken in 1973, when Fritz Sennheiser converted the company into a limited partnership. The founder’s son, Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, became a limited partner and, on March 1, 1976, Technical Director. 

In retiring in 1982 at the age of 70: “I had prepared myself for retirement – although I must admit that I would have been happy to have carried on even longer, simply because I enjoyed it, and of course because we had always been successful. After all, it took me two and a half years to get used to not being able to make the decisions any longer…”

But of course Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser maintained close ties with his company, attending shareholder meetings and visiting the factories and offices. The Sennheiser employees will remember him as a courteous, frank and responsible person of high integrity.

Dr Sennheiser remains one of the foremost pioneer entrepreneurs of the 20th century, and his legacy will live on in the extraordinary quality and diversity of his electronics products.

This account was largely adapted from a biography of Dr. Fritz Sennheiser appearing on Sennheiser Worldwide’s website: http://www.sennheiser.de/

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Mastering the VC Game, by Jeffrey Bussgang

May 2, 2010 by hightechhistory

Jeffrey Bussgang confesses at the onset of his new book, Mastering the VC Game, that venture capital was “never in my life plan,” and that “VC” as a business has traditionally not been as attractive for the entrepreneur because after all, “What budding entrepreneur would volunteer to play Robin instead of Batman?” Nevertheless, Bussgang, a founding partner of Boston’s Flybridge Capital Partners, makes a convincing case that even in its supporting role, venture capital can be an exciting business and a force for positive change.

Harry Hoagland, officer at the first publicly owned venture capital corporation, American Research & Development Corp., once said, “If I rejected 100% of the projects that came across my desk, I’d be 95% right.” It’s a sobering reminder that venture capital, though an important engine for the American economy, is a business frought with many of the same risks as investing in the stock market, or, in a more extreme sense, a gambling casino. Though due-diligence is emphasized in selecting investments, intangibles still play a significant part in if and when an investment is made.

Jeff Bussgang, armed with both a hyperactive BlackBerry and a fat Rolodex, has drawn extensively on each as he chronicles his own experiences and those of his colleagues – entrepreneurs and VCs – to produce an authentic insider’s perspective of what it’s like to be on the forefront of new and exciting businesses. Being in it for the money, Bussgang asserts, is not the primary goal; rather it’s the thrill of discovery: for example, a business that may detect some forms of cancer sooner, or one that makes dentistry much easier and less invasive.

Bussgang’s credibility is enhanced from having been in both the entrepreneurial and VC camps. He is the founder of UPromise, an organization that “partners” with businesses to help those who purchase through those partners to save money for college, as well as an original executive of Open Market, a firm started to make the Internet a safer business environment.

Bussgang conducted numerous interviews with notable VCs and entrepreneurs: the former including Tim Draper of Draper, Fisher, Juvetson; David Hornik of August Capital, and Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures. LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Sirtris Pharmaceuticals’ Christoph Westphal add significant ballast to the entrepreneur’s arguments. And what’s refreshing is that Bussgang doesn’t shy away from shining the spotlight on himself to give a “warts and all” account of his own dealings – often successful, but with the occasional embarrassing moment.

Venture capital firms, Bussgang maintains, “have invested more than $441 billion in some 57,000 companies in the United States,” where more than 12 million people (or 12% of the U.S. workforce) hold jobs in venture-backed companies. Additionally, through his profiles of VCs like China’s Quan Zhou and Vietnam’s Henry Nguyen, Bussgang shows how venture capital has become one of America’s greatest exports – helping to develop the developing world.

Even with the aforementioned statistics, the venture capital “industry” consists of “fewer than seven thousand people working for less than a thousand firms,” according to Bussgang. And from these firms, featuring a disproportionate number of graduates of Harvard, M.I.T. and Stanford business schools, decisions leading to the funding/aiding of companies are made by a relatively small number of people. By Bussgang’s estimation, decisions to back businesses that account for 20% of the American Gross Domestic Product are made by fewer than one thousand individuals shuttling back-and-forth between Boston, New York and Silicon Valley.

Although the number of female entrepreneurs is relatively small, Bussgang notes that they are relatively non-existent in venture capital. Numerous reasons for this have been suggested, but regardless, Bussgang has made concerted efforts to both interview and discuss the achievements of several influential women in both fields. They are obviously possessed by the same hyperactive drive to succeed in business as their male counterparts, and Bussgang treats them with the due respect they have earned.

Mastering the VC Game proceeds methodically through all stages of the VC process: from selecting the appropriate firms to approach, to making “The Pitch,” to strategies the entrepreneur might employ once VC funding is achieved, to the potential “soap opera” that can develop among the entrepreneur(s), Board of Directors, and the VC firms, to exit strategies in which one ”cashes out” of investments.

Though the relationship between the VC and the entrepreneur may often be a tense one, complicated by numerous financial and interpersonal challenges, Jeffrey Bussgang remains an irrepressible evangelist for the potential of venture capital to “change the world” in meaningful and progressive ways.

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O’Reilly Media releases poster called “History of Programming Languages”

April 21, 2010 by hightechhistory

For more than fifty years, computer programmers have been writing code. And new technologies continue to emerge, develop, and mature at a rapid pace – to the point where there are presently more than 2,500 documented programming languages. O’Reilly Media has now produced a poster called History of Programming Languages, which plots over fifty programming languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline. (Click on the above image to view in Adobe PDF Reader).

O’Reilly first discovered the History of Programming Languages diagram, created by Éric Lévénez, while visiting their French office. They were so taken with its level of detail and visual impact that they wanted to come up with a way to share it more widely. Originally, it was printed full size (eighteen feet in all) and ran it along a wall at their Mac OS X Conference last fall.

Its reception was extraordinary – in fact, so many people came by to make notations on the diagram, that it was decided there would be considerably wider interest if it could be printed in a smaller, more portable format. With Lévénez’ permission, O’Reilly collected comments from its authors, editors, and friends, and rebuilt the file so it could be printed in its current dimensions: 39″ x 17”. Lévénez maintains a site with his original diagram, change logs, an explanation of how he creates his charts, and links to additional resources such as Bill Kinnersley’s Language List of over 2,500 programming languages at www.levenez.com.

Along with the initial praise, there also came many suggestions for additions to the diagram. O’Reilly made only a small number of changes – in order to keep the file in a relatively manageable state; but there is a high level of historical knowledge and personal experience of the events in this poster among high tech enthusiasts generally, and computer programmers specifically.

O’Reilly is actively soliciting such suggestions, as well as general comments on their History of Programming Languages Wiki.

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A discussion of platforms, applications and the iPad at Vilna Shul, Apr. 7, 2010.

April 12, 2010 by hightechhistory

Having secured my own iPad device the Saturday before Easter, I thought it would be beneficial to attend a gathering at Boston’s Vilna Shul synagogue on April 7th to discuss high tech platforms and applications, and how they are important not only for how information is delivered to the end-user, but also how they have impacted our culture generally. The iPad and its potential for projecting the importance of platforms and applications may be in its infancy, but already has software engineers and designers excited about this new vehicle for displaying their work. I recall Harlan Anderson mentioning in his memoir, Learn, Earn & Return that the PDP-1 computer Digital Equipment Corp. created required the active participation of software designers to maximize the computer’s enormous potential, but that there was much friction between hardware and software engineers. Nowadays, these two camps need each other more than ever, which has necessitated close interaction.

As the introduction on Vilna Shul’s website described the talk, “There was a time when the most complicated platform decision faced by a developer was PC or Mac, and sometimes choosing a flavor of Unix. Now in the age of mobile devices and set-top boxes, a platform is not just a development tool but can serve as a channel for delivering product to the market … The arrival of a new platform, such as the much-anticipated iPad, creates new opportunities, but what factors determine the rate of adoption and the return on investment in building for that platform?”

Serving on the panel to discuss these and other topics were: Ravi Mehta, Vice President, Products, Viximo; Brad Rosen, C.E.O., Drync, and Michael Troiano, President, Holland-Mark Digital. Christopher Herot, Chief Product Officer, VSee Lab moderated and software designer Doug Levin, per usual, ably introduced and coordinated the event.

The first part of the discussion centered on choosing a platform and what makes one better than another. Mike Troiano, who received his MBA from Harvard Business School and who writes a high tech blog called Miketrap, indicated that the platform is the very foundation on which 3rd parties can participate; i.e. consumers. Ravi Mehta, who received his business degree from MIT’s Sloan School, added that the idea of applications is for them to interact with the hardware. The platform traditionally served as more of a “gateway,” but now is a key delivery system for applications. Brad Rosen, also an attendee of Sloan School, whose Drync is an application for wine enthusiasts designed for the iPhone, added that he’s found that the iPhone platform is able to effectively deliver a targeted message or product to a specific audience.

Ravi then mentioned that Facebook has taken the initiative in designing a platform that gives designers free reign in creating applications that seek out target audiences. Mike added that third party applications on Facebook have become a business strategy all their own, and that many in high tech felt this area would be a growth industry – which it has proven to be – and has created boundless opportunities for software developers. Brad added that games in many ways have driven this growth. Additionally, Mike said, there has been mutual benefit (platform/app) in collaboration, as opposed to going it separately (i.e. division of value).

Brad, whose previous experience has been with the iPhone – and who will now be designing for the Android phone, said that with software development for both devices, the “monetizing” model is still fluid, but that the goals of the platform and application designers are closely aligned – even if the model isn’t yet aligned to make the developers money. However, Apple, it was mentioned, seems to be more conscientious than others in that 30% of revenue from apps goes to designers. An interesting fact Brad added was that Apple now allegedly has 700 million credit card numbers on file, which makes the importance of the “micro-transaction” – no matter how small – a lucrative one.

Next question from Chris Herot to the panel involved “When is a platform NOT one.” Mike observed that this is the case when participation in the platform is controlled by a central body – and is not organic in nature. As mentioned previously, Facebook’s success is due in large measure to its spontaneity, which is not controlled by or filtered through corporate or other entities. Ravi suggested that Twitter, though a successful platform encouraging social interaction, does not present as many opportunities for software applications. In relation to the iPhone, Ravi added that people bought it for its “killer” applications; though the whole process through which applications became influential was completely spontaneous. Apple didn’t originally push various applications for the device; but the more they came to dominate the whole mindset of the iPhone, more opportunities presented themselves for the company, and for software engineers. Brad then commented that the quality of an application drives interest, and consequently, monetizing. 

Ravi and the rest of the panel then went into how Steve Jobs and his visionary approach to platforms has resulted in an inexorable shift in consumers’ behavior and their very interaction with computers. In relation to this, Chris Herot asked who had recently acquired an iPad, and also asked hypothetically which platform would each of the panelists design for. Brad said he enjoyed developing for the iPhone and Android, though he added that many designers (particularly in the gaming sphere) are leaving the iPhone for the iPad because of the sheer screen size.

In summary, I learned that applications tend to propagate exponentially when their platform is judged to be a successful vehicle for their display and growth. Apple Computer, in designing the iPhone may not have conceived it as the cultural phenomenon it has become in serving as the platform for hundreds of thousands of creative applications, but through the organic interaction between consumers and computer engineers, has become iconic. Where the iPad goes from here is based on that same template, and with a larger screen featuring high definition technology, it’s not inconceivable that this device may be headed toward even greater heights.

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A brief discussion of the origins and design importance of the “@” symbol

March 23, 2010 by hightechhistory

The "@" symbol as it appears on every modern keyboard

In English it’s referred to as the “at” or “ape tail”;  the “arroba” in Spanish; the “chiocciola” in Italian. The Germans call it a “monkey’s tail,” and the Chinese “little mouse.” The Russians think of it as a dog, and the Finns as a slumbering cat.  The ”@” symbol, the ubiquitous presence in electronic or “e” mail is easy to overlook in the course of our daily Internet correspondence; but although there are disagreements to its precise origin, its central role in modern communication had utilitarian, if not somewhat random, beginnings. We do know it first appeared on a typewriter – an American Underwood - in 1885 and was used, mostly in accounting documents, as shorthand for “at the rate of.”

According to Yaelf.com, which is devoted to English language history, “That the @ symbol finally became part of cyberspace is due to Ray Tomlinson, an American engineer who is one of the founding fathers of the Internet, or actually the Arpanet [at Beranek, Brown and Newman], the predecessor to the present Internet. [In 1971] Tomlinson invented a system for individual electronic mail, introducing the first “hot” application of the Arpanet. He used the @ symbol to distinguish a sender’s or addressee’s name from the name of the electronic mail box. According to Giorgio Stabile, a professor of history at Rome’s La Sapienza university, Tomlinson chose this symbol “just because it was on the keyboard.”

Noticing that the symbol sat obscurely on the keyboard for all of those intervening years, Tomlinson wanted something that would indicate that the user was “at” an actual computer writing out a message. Another theory, apocryphal perhaps, has suggested Tomlinson selected the “@” in less than a minute of consideration.

Now that the Internet and email have become commercial, if not cultural touchstones in our society, the “@” symbol has inexorably captured the attention of design scholars and enthusiasts. The New York Times this week ran a story about the symbol’s inclusion in New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design Collection. According to the Times, there are at least a tandem of reasons for this:

First, both the old and new @ fulfill the same function of simplifying and clarifying something that’s fiendishly complicated to make and interpret: handwritten script and computer code respectively. Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA, describes that as “an act of design of extraordinary elegance and economy.” Both qualities are prized by MoMA, especially “economy” in a time of recession and environmental crisis, when reinventing something that’s under-used seems much smarter than designing something new.

Timeliness matters to MoMA too, and the new @ is timely not only in its economy but also precisely because it is not physical (just like equally dynamic areas of contemporary design such as software and social design). “MoMA’s collection has always been in touch with its time,” Ms. Antonelli said, “and design these days is often an act with aesthetic and ethical consequences, not necessarily a physical object.”

In conclusion, the hastily considered selection of the “@” symbol, which at the time represented a practical response to a communications need, has, with its elevation to almost mythological status, impacted not only our daily lives, but our aesthetic conscience. It excels not only in form and function, but according to the MoMA, also embodies the values of clarity, honesty and simplicity that MoMA considers essential to good design. As a personal note, in the early 1990s, I purchased a “Swatch” watch that includes a big red “@” on a white field. Timely, indeed, in a very literal sense.

Posted in Internet | Leave a Comment »

Review: Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, by Kurt W. Beyer

March 12, 2010 by hightechhistory

Grace Hopper was a pioneer computer scientist before such a profession ever existed. Brought up in comfortable surroundings in Manhattan and schooled at Vassar, Hopper brought her sharp intellect, organizational powers and an unrelenting drive to her work. She started her career at the Harvard Computation Laboratory at the beginning of World War II, working under “Commander” Howard Aiken, who Beyer portrays as a headstrong, demanding and unsympathetic manager – who would do anything for you if you were completely devoted to him and your work, or nothing at all if you antagonized him. And as Beyer shows, the latter was typically much easier to accomplish than the former.

Against all odds, Hopper, a woman in what was an overwhelmingly male environment, gained Aiken’s trust, admiration, and even his friendship in the several years they were colleagues. At the time, the laboratory was overseen by the U.S. Navy, where Hopper would spend many of her future years, retiring officially in 1967 as a Rear Admiral. The Navy was interested in computers to aid in ballistics, and other military applications, and Hopper spearheaded many of their efforts.

At Harvard, Hopper developed and refined the process of “debugging” a computer and “hacking,” – the latter of which, in its early days, was simply the writing of computer code. She also, at Aiken’s request, wrote the manual for their Mark I computer. In 1947, at Aiken’s directive, Hopper helped oversee the convening of the Harvard Symposium on computers, which for the first time blended academics in the budding computer field with industry executives to brainstorm, network, and discuss industry innovations. It was a seminal event in post-World War II high tech.

Following the War, Hopper worked first for the Eckert-Mauchly computer firm – the innovators of the ENIAC computer. Under financial duress, the firm was later acquired by the Remington Rand Corporation, where Hopper was a primary participant in the UNIVAC computer project. The UNIVAC subsequently went head-to-head with IBM’s 705 computer series, and as Beyer writes, IBM’s superior financial position gained through its access to MIT’s SAGE system (a broad-based U.S. anti-missile network) helped IBM to surpass Remington Rand for good. IBM’s gaining of the MIT contract is shown to be a turning point in the commercial application of computer technology. It was due in part to such stresses that Hopper both succumbed to, and eventually conquered an addiction to alcohol that at one point landed her in a Philadelphia jail on a drunk and disorderly charge.

Beyer writes convincingly about Hopper’s ability to turn convention on its head by not only surviving, but thriving as one of the very few women in computer science. And her development of COBOL computer language, which had primarily business applications, was arguably her greatest legacy. After retiring from the Navy, she concluded her computer career at Digital Equipment Corporation. Hopper also complemented her career by giving countless lectures on computer science. Her whole ethos was to communicate advances in computer science to wherever and whenever she could.

The variety of source material Beyer uses is impressive, and for the most part his narrative is entertaining and informative – though there are technological passages throughout that will seem arcane to the lay-reader. But overall, Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age succeeds as the authoritative account of this extraordinarily gifted and accomplished computer pioneer.

Posted in High Tech History | 1 Comment »

The Boston Computer Society

February 12, 2010 by hightechhistory

On February 12, 1977, the Boston Computer Society (BCS) officially formed by a thirteen-year-old boy named Jonathan Rotenberg and another fellow named Richard Gardner.  It’s original purpose was to be a resource for anyone interested in computer technology who wanted to exchange information with others.  It became the largest such user group in the world, hosting major product announcements like the East Coast release of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 and it peaked at over 30,000 members around the world.  Over time though, the purpose of the organization became obsolete as computers became more ubiquitous and the Internet became a major source of information computer users.  After 20 years, the membership shrunk and as the organization ran out of money, the board voted to close it down.  The BCS is remembered by the many computer pioneers who were members and the other user groups and publications that lived on after the organization ceased to exist.

Here are some of the BCS milestones compliments of Wikipedia:

1977: Founded on February 12th.

1978: Membership rose to 73. First mimeographed copy of BCS Update is printed. First BCS telephone line installed in Jonathan Rotenberg’s bedroom. First meetings are held in the Commonwealth School cafeteria.

1979: First BCS user group forms for the Commodore PET computer. First BCS book published; a directory of local stores, consultants, and services. Membership is up to 300. VisiCalc (first spreadsheet program for PCs) introduced at a BCS meeting by members Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin.

1980: The BCS incorporates and rents a small downtown Boston office. Membership is at 1000 with nine user groups. BCS Update becomes Computer Update, a glossy 34-page magazine.  In April, the Apple/Boston user group becomes part of the Boston Computer society. It’s first meeting was held in a hall in downtown Boston.

1981: First full-time employee hired. Official non-profit status granted. 

1982: Membership grows to 3,000 with 13 user and special interest groups. Dues were $18. First electronic bulletin board started.

1983: BCS receives national media attention via the launch of IBM’s PC.  Membership doubles to 6,300.

1984: Office moves to bigger space as membership hits 10,000. Resource Center opens. First Buying Guide published. The Macintosh computer is introduced at a BCS meeting and the Mac Group starts. First Microsoft Windows group starts.

1985: Membership at 17,000 with 41 groups.

1986: First overseas affiliation with the Denmark Personal Computer Society.  Membership is 23,000 with $35 annual

1987: Tenth Anniversary. A special 132-page Computer Update published. IBM and Mac Group open offices. Search begins for new BCS Center. Membership at 26,000.

1988: Membership goes over 30,000. NeXT introduces its computer at one of the largest BCS meetings ever with almost 3,000 people lined up at Symphony Hall in Boston.

1989: Membership peaks in June at 31,100 with dues at $40 for an individual membership. Over 20 electronic bulletin boards and 700 activists. Revenues are over $2 million.

1990: Rotenberg moves from president to chairman. Tracy Licklider named president. Declining membership and local economics force scale back of BCS Center. Membership at 26,800. Dues reduced to $39.

1991: BCS office moves to One Kendall Square in Cambridge. Membership shrinks to 24,400.  Joint publications (BCS Tech, BCS Professionals, BCS Computers) launched.

1992: Membership at 23,500. HP executive Bob Grenoble named president. Macintosh Group office moves from Somerville to Cambridge and their bulletin board logs its 500,000 call.

1993: Computer Update becomes a new flagship publication – BCS Magazine. President Bob Grenoble differs with BCS Activists as to BCS direction, tries to change computer platform emphasis – Mac, PC, Amiga, etc. Boston Globe quotes Grenoble as saying computers are not very useful to average person.

1994: Grenoble resigns.  Eighth annual meeting has 10,000 attendees, 150 exhibitors, 150 seminars and workshops.

1995: President and Board find it difficult to cut back staff and operation to meet declining membership and revenues.

1996:  Board votes to close BCS.

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