The IT History Society (ITHS) is an

organization An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from ...

that supports the

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

and

scholarship A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need. Scholarsh ...

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...

by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, it advises historians, promotes collaboration among academic organizations and museums, and assists IT corporations in preparing and archiving their histories for future studies.

Activities

The IT History Society provides background information to those with an interest in the history of

Information Technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...

, including papers that provide advice on how to perform historical work and how historical activities can benefit private sector organizations. It tracks historical projects seeking funding as well as projects underway and completed. It maintains online, publicly available, lists of events pertaining to IT history, IT history resources, an IT Honor Roll acknowledging more than 700 individuals who have made a noteworthy contribution to the information technology industry, and a database of notable technology quotes. A continuing project is one of aggregating the locations and content of IT history archival information around the world to facilitate and encourage IT history research and scholarship.What's Your Tech
/ref> This International Database of Historical and Archival Sites currently consists of 1,663 international information technology historical and archival collections encompassing over 49.8 million documents. An IT Hardware database has been added consisting of 12,187 entries, an IT Honor Roll with 1,031 entries, and a Technical Quotes database with over 1,000 entries. These databases are being added to on a regular basis an IT Software and IT Companies databases will debut soon. ITHS holds an annual meeting and conference.

History

The International Charles Babbage Society was founded in 1978 and operated out of

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

. The following year the

American Federation of Information Processing Societies The American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) was an umbrella organization of professional societies established on May 10, 1961, and dissolved in 1990. Its mission was to advance knowledge in the field of information science, ...

(AFIPS) became a principal sponsor of the society, which was renamed the

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

. In 1980, the institute moved to the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

, which contracted with the principals of the

to sponsor and house the institute. A new entity, the Charles Babbage Foundation, was created to help support and govern the institute, in partnership with the university. In 1989, CBI became an organized research unit of the university. Around 2000, CBF broadened its mission to support the history of information technology through other organizations, collaborating, for example, with the

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support o ...

, Software History Center, and the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...

in experimenting with Internet-based archival and historical research. In 2002, the Charles Babbage Foundation broadened its mission to support the entire IT history community. In 2007, CBF changed its name to the IT History Society and reworked its programs to better support the IT history community.

Charles Babbage Institute

The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the

specializing in the history of

, particularly the history of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking since 1935. The institute is named for Charles Babbage, the nineteenth-century English inventor of the programmable computer. The institute is located in

Elmer L. Andersen Elmer Lee Andersen (June 17, 1909 – November 15, 2004) was an American businessman, philanthropist, and politician who built a successful business career with the H. B. Fuller Company. Andersen was most notably the 30th Governor of Minnesota ...

Library at the

University of Minnesota Libraries The University of Minnesota Libraries is the library system of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, operating at 13 facilities in and around Minneapolis–Saint Paul. It has over 7 million volumes and 119,000 serial titles that are coll ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

Babbage Activities

In addition to holding important historical archives, in paper and electronic form, its staff of historians and archivists conduct and publish historical and archival research that promotes the study of the history of information technology internationally. CBI also encourages research in the area and related topics (such as archival methods); to do this, it offers graduate fellowships and travel grants, organizes conferences and workshops, and participates in public programming. It also serves as an international clearinghouse of resources for the history of information technology. Also valuable for researchers are its extensive collection of

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...

interviews, more than 400 in total. Oral histories with important early figures in the field have been conducted by CBI staff and collaborating colleagues. Owing to the poorly documented state of many early computer developments, these oral histories are immensely valuable documents. One author called the set of CBI oral histories "a priceless resource for any historian of computing." Most of CBI's oral histories are transcribed and available online.Oral histories
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. The archival collection also contains

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...

s; records of

professional association A professional association (also called a professional body, professional organization, or professional society) usually seeks to advocacy, further a particular profession, the interests of individuals and organisations engaged in that professio ...

s; corporate records (including the Burroughs corporate records and the

Control Data Control Data Corporation (CDC) was a mainframe and supercomputer firm. CDC was one of the nine major United States computer companies through most of the 1960s; the others were IBM, Burroughs Corporation, DEC, NCR, General Electric, Honeywel ...

corporate records, among many others);

trade publication A trade magazine, also called a trade journal or trade paper (colloquially or disparagingly a trade rag), is a magazine or newspaper whose target audience is people who work in a particular trade or industry. The collective term for thi ...

periodicals A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also exampl ...

; manuals and product literature for older systems, photographic material (stills and moving), and a variety of other rare reference materials. It is now a center at the

, and is located on its

Twin Cities Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in sta ...

, Minneapolis campus, where it is housed in the

Library on the West Bank.

Archival papers and oral histories

The CBI has collections of archival papers and oral histories from many notable figures in computing including: *

Gene Amdahl Gene Myron Amdahl (November 16, 1922 – November 10, 2015) was an American computer architect and high-tech entrepreneur, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at IBM and later his own companies, especially Amdahl Corporation ...

* Walter L. Anderson *

Isaac L. Auerbach Isaac L. Auerbach (October 9, 1921 – December 24, 1992) was an early advocate and pioneer of computing technologies, holder of 15 patents, founding president of the International Federation for Information Processing (1960–1965), a member ...

Rebecca Bace Rebecca "Becky" Gurley Bace (1955–2017) was an American computer security expert and pioneer in intrusion detection. She spent 12 years at the US National Security Agency where she created the Computer Misuse and Anomaly Detection (CMAD) resear ...

Charles W. Bachman Charles William Bachman III (December 11, 1924 – July 13, 2017) was an American computer scientist, who spent his entire career as an industrial researcher, developer, and manager rather than in academia. He was particularly known for his ...

Paul Baran Paul Baran (born Pesach Baran ; April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011) was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching, which is today the dom ...

Jean Bartik Jean Bartik ( Betty Jean Jennings; December 27, 1924 – March 23, 2011) was one of the original six programmers for the ENIAC computer. Bartik studied mathematics in school then began work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually ca ...

Edmund Berkeley Edmund Callis Berkeley (February 22, 1909 – March 7, 1988) was an American computer scientist who co-founded the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1947. His 1949 book ''Giant Brains, or Machines That Think'' popularized cognitiv ...

James Bidzos Jim Bidzos is the Founder of Verisign, Inc. He currently serves as the company's president and CEO. He assumed this position on August 1, 2011, after the resignation of Mark McLaughlin on July 27. Bidzos has been serving the company as chairman o ...

Gertrude Blanch Gertrude Blanch (2 February 1897, in Kolno, Russian Empire (now Poland) – 1 January 1996) was an American mathematician who did pioneering work in numerical analysis and computation. She was a leader of the Mathematical Tables Project in New Yo ...

Vint Cerf Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include ...

* John Day * Edsger W. Dijkstra *

Wallace John Eckert Wallace John Eckert (June 19, 1902 – August 24, 1971) was an American astronomer, who directed the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University which evolved into the research division of IBM. Life Wallace John Eckert ...

* Alexandra Illmer Forsythe * Margaret R. Fox *

Gideon Gartner Gideon I. Gartner (March 13, 1935 – December 12, 2020) was an American businessman, entrepreneur, educator and philanthropist. Often referred to as the father of the modern analyst industry, he is best known as the founder of Gartner, Inc. (for ...

* Bruce Gilchrist * George Glaser * Martin A. Goetz *

Gene H. Golub Gene Howard Golub (February 29, 1932 – November 16, 2007), was an American numerical analysis, numerical analyst who taught at Stanford University as Fletcher R. Jones, Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and held a courtesy appointmen ...

* Carl Hammer *

Martin Hellman Martin Edward Hellman (born October 2, 1945) is an American cryptologist and mathematician, best known for his involvement with public key cryptography in cooperation with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle. Hellman is a longtime contributor to ...

* Frances E. Holberton *

Cuthbert Hurd Cuthbert Corwin Hurd (April 5, 1911 – May 22, 1996) was an American computer scientist and entrepreneur, who was instrumental in helping the International Business Machines Corporation develop its first general-purpose computers. Life Hurd ...

Anita K. Jones Anita Katherine Jones (born March 10, 1942) is an American computer scientist and former U.S. government official. She was Director, Defense Research and Engineering from 1993 to 1997. Jones was elected a member of the National Academy of Engin ...

* Brian Kahin *

Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...

* Bryan S. Kocher * Mark P. McCahill * Daniel D. McCracken * Alex McKenzie * Carl Machover * Michael Mahoney *

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, ...

* Calvin N. Mooers * William C. Norris * Susan Nycum * Donn B. Parker *

Alan J. Perlis Alan Jay Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) was an American computer scientist and professor at Purdue University, Carnegie Mellon University and Yale University. He is best known for his pioneering work in programming languages and was ...

Robert M. Price Robert McNair Price (born July 7, 1954) is an American New Testament scholar. His most notable stance is arguing in favor of the Christ myth theorythe claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. Price is the author of a number of books on bi ...

* Claire K. Schultz *

Erwin Tomash Erwin Tomash (November 17, 1921 – December 10, 2012) was an American engineer who co-founded Dataproducts Corporation, which specialized in computer technology, specifically printers and core memory units. He is recognized for his early pioneeri ...

Keith Uncapher Keith Uncapher (1922–2002) was an American computer engineer and manager. At the RAND Corporation Uncapher worked on several pioneering computer projects. He founded the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern Califo ...

Willis Ware Howard George Willis Ware (August 31, 1920 – November 22, 2013), popularly known as Willis Howard Ware was an American computer pioneer who co-developed the IAS machine that laid down the blueprint of the modern day computer in the late 20th ...

Terry Winograd Terry Allen Winograd (born February 24, 1946) is an American professor of computer science at Stanford University, and co-director of the Stanford Human–Computer Interaction Group. He is known within the philosophy of mind and artificial intel ...

Patrick Winston Patrick Henry Winston (February 5, 1943 – July 19, 2019) was an American computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Winston was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997, succ ...

Konrad Zuse Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program ...

CBI History

CBI was founded in 1978 by

and associates as the ''International Charles Babbage Society'', and initially operated in

. In 1979, the ''

'' (AFIPS) became a principal sponsor of the Society, which was renamed the Charles Babbage Institute. In 1980, the institute moved to the

, which contracted with the principals of the Charles Babbage Institute to sponsor and house the institute. In 1989, CBI became an organized research unit of the university.

References

External links

*
CBI website

History of CBI and CBF
{{DEFAULTSORT:It History Society Charles Babbage 1978 establishments in Minnesota Historical societies of the United States History of science organizations History of computing Information technology organizations International organizations based in the United States Oral history Organizations established in 2007 Organizations based in Minnesota Research institutes established in 1978 University of Minnesota