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.

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.

With Apple expected to unveil its long-awaited tablet device today, Wednesday, Jan. 27th, it somehow seems appropriate that we revisit history. Some of these photos are shown below, courtesy of “This Old Mac.” The sheer number of these various prototypes shows how much Apple’s founders apparently thought about bringing a tablet to market.

In 1983, Frog Design created the “Bashfuls” in reference to the dwarf in the fairy tale Snow White. Bashful was created alongside the Apple IIe as an extension of the Snow White industrial-design language used by Apple during 1984-1990, and which continued with several Macintosh models. The firm later designed Sun’s SPARCstations in 1986 and the famous NeXT Computer in 1987. Frog Design also helped create the Apple IIc, the fourth in its very successful Apple II line of personal computers.

Apple Tablet prototype from around 1983, which looks similar to the Apple IIc.

As you can see, there are none of the sleek contours that characterize Apple’s products today. But you can still see the emphasis on ease-of-use and a (relatively) slim profile.

Variations of the Bashful tablet included one with an attached keyboard and one with a floppy-disk drive and a handle for portability. Some of the tablet prototypes included a stylus. And one concept even had an attached phone. Having been developed as a prototype in 1993, this was a PowerBook Duo Tablet Computer codenamed PenLite.

Codenamed "PenLite," Apple developed its prototype of the PowerBook Duo Tablet Computer in 1993.

According to This Old Mac:

“The Macintosh PowerBook Duo Tablet computer was a combination of a PowerBook Duo computer and a Tablet PC. It had a stylus pen, backlit display, vertically built-in floppy drive and ran standard MacOS software. The PowerBook Duo Tablet could also be connected to the Duo Docks and accessories. The project was canceled in 1994 before the introduction of Newton Message Pad 100. Apple felt that it would be too confusing to have different pen-driven tablet computers.”

This reminds me so very well of the Digital PDP-1 computer, which also used a stylus. It would appear that Apple considered this technology readily adaptable to the prototypical tablet.

One of the very formative designs stated “Graphics Tablet” on its margin, and has a memory card dated 1979.

The 1983 Apple IIe "Graphics Tablet." The interface card is dated 1979, making it in many ways the earliest Apple tablet prototype.

For a variety of reasons, the “Bashfuls” never made it to market, and one can only guess as to their whereabouts today. In all likelihood, both Frog Design and Apple (both still extant), have them squirreled away somewhere.

A summary of the initial decision to postpone marketing tablets, and why their re-appearance should make life easier for the average consumer:

Apple has always been keen on developing tablet technology, and their original research into the subject was prescient; but in the end, they decided on smaller, handheld devices as in the Newton – a forerunner of the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) – instead of full blown Tablets.

First, Apple did not have an operating system that was touch friendly. At the time, the Classic OS was still developing, and the Newton [message pad] project had its own problems (for one, its size was comparable to a brick). The Newton also had several cumbersome accessories, as shown below:

Three Newton MessagePad devices with keyboard and LinearFlash PCMCIA memory card accessories. (image courtesy Magnus Manske).

However, it would seem that with the arrival and extraordinary popularity of the iPhone, this hurdle has been cleared,

As for additional theories, from This Old Mac:

“In order for the Tablet to be marketable, they probably thought that they would have to make their own custom OS for it, like they did with the Newton: not an easy task, and something that would take years to develop. But human resources at Apple were limited, since the Classic OS was in desperate need of a refresh, since Microsoft won the Windows copyright/patent battle with Apple and launched their own full-blown Windows OS in 1993: their efforts were focused on just keeping their home computer market alive.

“Second, a bad economy… Apple was already into the Newton project for many millions, and taking another substantive risk with a new breed of computers was likely not something the Board would have entertained.

“Third, the public was likely not ready to accept Tablet computers. Of course, all was not lost, as the research and development from these Tablet projects surely contributed to the Newton’s evolution, and set a foundation at Apple for future projects of similar kind.”

It would appear then that Apple’s current tablet is just the next step in the evolution of the laptop. It has been widely suggested that the tablet’s mobility is a chief reason for its appeal. It can be transported places where a laptop would be both cumbersome and impractical, and its touch technology could offer a facility of use that is pleasant and easy – Kindle or eRead devices come to mind – not to mention GPS devices such as the Garmin. However, it will certainly have Apple’s classic attention to visual appeal. It will likely be a shiny, industrial grade of aluminum, perhaps with the glowing Apple logo on the back, and both thin and light – permitting ease of transport. Think of a portable office. Yet another way in which the history of high tech is influencing the future.

Mitch Kapor founded Lotus with Jonathan Sachs in 1982.  Kapor had come from VisiCalc, a competitor, and Sachs had come from a company that created spreadsheet software for the Data General minicomputer.  Together they architected and implemented the original version of 1-2-3 for the IBM PC which had been announced in August 1981.  The original 1-2-3 code was written in assembly language for the IBM 808X 16-bit architecture.  It was the first electronic spreadsheet to do something called “natural order of recalculation” which helped make it faster than other spreadsheet software.

Later in 1983, Lotus grew its number of employees and the company went public.  The original business plan had called for $3 to $4 million in sales in 1983.  Lotus actually made $53 million in sales that year.  In 1984, Lotus tripled that and made over $150 million.  It’s hard to explain what happens when a company has that much success and that much growth early in its history, but this Lotus corporate video does a good job of capturing the first five years of the company’s history.

Last night I attended the Vilna Shul Speakers Series panel discussion on “Venture Capitalists Perspectives on 2009, 2010 and Beyond.” The moderator was Howard Anderson, Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Business, and featured panelists included Elliot Katzman of Commonwealth Capital Partners, Jeff Fagnan of Atlas Ventures, Jonathan Seelig of Globespan Partners, and Eric Paley of Founder Collective. Doug Levin, who coordinates these regular discussions, brought in a packed house at Beacon Hill’s historic Vilna Shul synagogue.

As the panelists generally discussed, 2009 has been a very challenging year for U.S. venture capital. According to the National Venture Capital Association, total U.S. venture capital investment totaled about $12 billion in the first nine months this year, a 45-percent decrease from $22 billion in the previous year. Additionally NVCA’s report also showed that U.S. venture capital firms raised only about $8 billion in the first three quarters of 2009, plunging from $25 billion during the same period in 2008. Investors have been in a prolonged holding pattern, hoping unemployment statistics will improve, along with other important economic indicators. This appears to still be the case as we enter 2010.

But I suppose an overarching theme for last night’s event could be “Everything Old is New Again.” In reflecting on Georges Doriot’s American Research and Development Corp. as well as his protégé William Elfers’ Greylock Partners, I’m reminded that exit strategies for so-called VC “winners” often take considerably more time than many in today’s typically crowded, highly competitive and impatient venture capital field expect, or aspire to. Moderator Howard Anderson suggested in the neighborhood of 7-8 years to bring a company along. But he also warned against seeking too many rounds of financing, which could dilute both a company’s returns on equity, and its general attractiveness as an investment. He stated that every company has a shelf-life, and that though a VC investor’s main objective is to get in and get out with a solid return on investment (20 times outlay, for example), it also should choose wisely in the business concept, and nurture its earliest possible profitability.

The panelists, Katzman chief among them, emphasized the imperative of performing a disciplined and patient analysis of a possible investment – including evaluation of the character of the company’s leadership, the integrity and viability of their business proposal, and other factors. Also, as a more senior (over 35 y.o.) member of the panel, he had a traditional take on “non-compete” agreements; that is, when one takes a salary and advances in his career due to the company’s proprietary information, he has an ethical obligation to engage in and honor such an agreement. Next, he noted that in every successful enterprise, there is a need for strong supporting casts – including marketing executives. These are indeed what I would call “old school” concepts.

Next, and perhaps inevitably, as has been the case with many venture capital discussions I’ve recently attended, an attendee asks about the West Coast – East Coast “competition” in venture capital and innovation. Bostonians with chips on their shoulders bemoan the “fact” that Boston has fallen into second place behind Silicon Valley. Last night, California-based Google and Facebook, along with venture capital powerhouses Sequoia Capital and Greylock (three of the four founded, incidentally, by New England-educated and trained entrepreneurs), once again took center stage. After the groans from the audience subsided, there were various explanations offered, including both an aversion to risk in New England, as well as more of an emphasis on bio-technology than on computers and the Internet. In siding with New England in this fight, I offer an excerpt from Spencer Ante’s Jan. 12 column from his weblog, Creative Capital:

“[Flybridge Capital Partners’ Jeff Bussgang] claims Massachusetts is the number one generator of patents on a per capita basis in the U.S.–more than California or New York. ‘Imagine a steaming mass of innovation,’ says Bussgang.

“In almost every talk I have given related to Creative Capital, I am asked why Boston has fallen behind Silicon Valley as America’s center of innovation. This talk by Bussgang provides one of the best counterweights to that argument I have ever heard.” [There is a video of Bussgang discussing this in more detail in this Creative Capital blog post].

Jeff Fagnan got into a spirited exchange with Anderson over venture investment in China, and how both the East Coast and West Coasts should stop squabbling and look over their shoulders at the real future of venture investment. But China, as some in the audience suggested, has some real challenges facing it – such as asset surpluses, that could potentially signal red flags about future investment in that economy.

Another question involved “angel” investors: those who target their or their family’s investments to startups – often advancing a concept the investor considers personally or socially important. These “family-backed” investments can also be tailored to individuals who might require a smaller infusion – think of something between your typical limited partnership firm with billions of dollars under management, and micro-lending. Jonathan Seelig suggested that many times, a venture capital investor will invest in something primarily because he believes in the socially-redeeming aspects of a project and not only for its viability as an investment.

Later in the discussion, one woman asked about mentors for women in the largely male-dominated venture capital business, One suggestion from the audience involved the Women’s CEO Breakfast Group, as well as other, similar organizations that help women cultivate contacts and counsel in the field. Eric Paley was cited by one attendee for his willingness to listen to the concerns of businesswomen in this field, and he himself expressed confidence about their future in venture capital.

Lastly, the overriding lesson I learned about the venture capital business going forward for 2010 was Anderson’s admonishment that “We shouldn’t expect the IPO (initial public offering) market to roar back.” He cheekily stated the traditional “fallback” exit strategies – such as selling to European equity firms shortly before the company goes bankrupt - won’t work now as it did in the late 1990s. Again, more patience, more considered and targeted investment, and less expectation for immediate and sizable cash-outs should be the goals. Again, important lessons from early post-war venture capital history being learned by today’s venture capital industry.

“Welcome to MacIntosh” is a new independent documentary highlighting Apple Inc’s history and fan following.  ”The goal was to make a film that you can show to anyone, even someone that has never used a computer, and have them understand why so many people love Macintosh,” says Josh Rizzo, Co-Director. “We have received a lot of support from members of the Mac Community. We could not have done this without them.”

In the spring of 2009 the filmmakers held a screening in San Francisco during the week of Macworld Conference and Expo during which Apple Co-founder and entrepreneur Steve Wozniak comment that “Welcome to Macintosh” was “So much on the mark… I’ve been involved with some other independent films and this is by far the best one I’ve seen.”

Welcome to Macintosh has been presented in over fifty Macintosh User Groups around the world as well as an official selection in seven international film festivals including the 10th Annual Wisconsin Film Festival, the 4th Globians World and Culture Documentary Film Festival, the 1st Ann. Naperville Independent Film Fest, the Texandance International Film Festival as well as the Cleveland Ingenuity Festival.

The documentary premiers at 9:30 p.m. (e.s.t.) on CNBC on January 4, 2010.  You can also pre-order it through the official movie site.

Senator John McCain is responsible for a last-minute amendment that makes businesses promoted in spam subject to FTC penalties if they knew or should have known that their business was being promoted by the use of spam.  This was designed to close a loophole for affiliate programs that allowed spammers to abuse their programs.  It also encourages them to assist the FTC in identifying spammers.

AOL was one of the first Internet stocks added to the S&P 500 Index in the 1990’s which gave a lot a credibility to the hot new Internet stocks that were displacing more established  firms on the stock exchange.  Today, AOL doesn’t qualify for the S&P 500 Index because its value is below $3 billion.  If the stock crosses the line, it can move up from S&P MidCap 400 Index and back to the S&P 500 Index.

Who’s Place Did AOL Take On The New York Stock Exchange?

AOL replaces Imation Corp., whose market capitalization dropped below the $750 million minimum requirement to remain on the NYSE.  Imation is a spin-off of 3M  that designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of recordable data storage media and consumer electronics products.

Will The New AOL Make It?

We’ll find out how AOL makes it on its own.  Today, AOL has a new look, new logo, and new ad campaign.  Its CEO, Tim Armstrong, joined AOL last March from Google and has plans for AOL’s growth that include delivery of premium content that include news and local information, communications like instant messaging and online advertising.  AOL is way beyond “You’ve Got Mail,” but we’ll see if it’s got enough mojo to propel it back to the S&P 500.  Let’s just hope that history doesn’t repeat itself.

According to the article’s author, John Markoff, there were other pioneering labs at Stanford, but the A.I. lab received less recognition than its peers:

“One laboratory, Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center, became known for the mouse; a second, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, developed the Alto, the first modern personal computer. But the third, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or SAIL, run by the computer scientist John McCarthy, gained less recognition.”

SAIL was begun by Dr. John McCarthy (who coined the term “artificial intelligence”) in 1963. Les Earnest was its deputy director. During that time, McCarthy’s initial proposal, to the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon, envisioned that building a thinking machine would take about a decade. In 1966, the laboratory took up residence in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains behind Stanford in an unfinished corporate research facility that had been intended for a telecommunications firm.

Markoff continues, “SAIL researchers embarked on an extraordinarily rich set of technical and scientific challenges that are still on the frontiers of computer science, including machine vision and robotic manipulation, as well as language and navigation.”

This group of alumni distinguished themselves in other innovative and distinctive ways - with artificial intelligence at the heart of their experimentation. As Markoff notes, “… Raj Reddy and Hans Moravec  went on to pioneer speech recognition and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. Alan Kay brought his Dynabook portable computer concept first to Xerox PARC and later to Apple. Larry Tesler  developed the philosophy of simplicity in computer interfaces that would come to define the look and functioning of the screens of modern Apple computers — what is called the graphical user interface, or G.U.I.”

“John Chowning, a musicologist, referred to SAIL as a ‘Socratean abode.’ He was invited to use the mainframe computer at the laboratory late at night when the demand was light, and his group went on to pioneer FM synthesis, a technique for creating sounds that transforms the quality, or timbre, of a simple waveform into a more complex sound. (The technique was discovered by Dr. Chowning at Stanford in 1973 and later licensed to Yamaha.)”

As has been noted previously in “High Tech History,” Spacewar was, in essence the first video game which was programmed with a Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-1 computer. At Stanford, Joel Pitts, a protege of SAIL’s Don Knuth (who wrote definitive texts on computer programming),  “… took a version of the Spacewar computer game and turned it into the first coin-operated video game — which was installed in the university’s student coffee house — months before Nolan Bushnell did the same with Atari.”

In 1980, the lab merged with Stanford’s computer science department, reopened in 2004, and is now enjoying something of a rebirth. Markoff concludes,

“The reunion also gave a hint of what is to come. During an afternoon symposium at the reunion, several of the current SAIL researchers showed a startling video called “Chaos” taken from the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter project. An exercise in machine learning, the video shows a model helicopter making a remarkable series of maneuvers that would not be possible by a human pilot. The demonstration is particular striking because the pilot system first learned from a human pilot and then was able to extend those skills.

But an artificial intelligence? It is still an open question. In 1978, Dr. McCarthy wrote, “human-level A.I. might require 1.7 Einsteins, 2 Maxwells, 5 Faradays and .3 Manhattan Projects.”

Reunion of the S.A.I.L. Laboratory at Stanford University last month