Category Archives: Software history

Archiving LISP history

Based on the progress I’ve made with FORTRAN, I decided to start another effort at the Computer History Museum to track down source code and documents for the original M.I.T. LISP I/1.5 project. I have made some progress, and am … Continue reading

Posted in LISP, Software history | 4 Comments

Historic FORTRAN documents online

My efforts to track down source code and documents from the original IBM 704 FORTRAN project have been one of the pilot projects of the Software Collection Committee at the Computer History Museum. I’m starting to assemble a web site … Continue reading

Posted in FORTRAN, Software history | 6 Comments

Bob Bemer died

Bob Bemer, who I communicated with recently regarding the Fortran “Tome”, died of cancer on June 22 at his home on Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas. He was the “father of ASCII” and one of the first to point out … Continue reading

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Peter Zilahy Ingerman

I learned that Peter Zilahy Ingerman, PhD, was the donor of the Fortran II listing at The Smithsonian. Peter published a number of books and papers in the area of programming languages and compilers. I called Peter and had a … Continue reading

Posted in Simulators, Software history, UNIVAC | 1 Comment

Tom Van Vleck

Tom Van Vleck and I met at Tandem in 1981. Tom is the creator and maintainer of multicians.org, which “presents the story of the Multics operating system for people interested in the system’s history”. Since Tom was at MIT in … Continue reading

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Bob Bemer

Bob Bemer joined IBM in 1949 and has an interesting web site documenting his long career, including leading the development of FORTRANSIT, the second Fortran compiler, for the IBM 650. Using Google, I came across Bob Bemer’s Who Was Who … Continue reading

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The Smithsonian

Based on Irv Ziller’s recollection that historic Fortran materials had been sent to the Smithsonian Institution, I looked at their web site and found this page describing the Division of Information Technology & Society, which is part of the National … Continue reading

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Software Collection Committee

The first meeting of the Software Collection Committee of the Computer History Museum was held November 19th. The purpose of the committee is to help the museum, whose mission statement is “To preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and … Continue reading

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