IP: Silicon Valley folks -- LECTURES: "Charles Babbage's Calculating Engine" & "Collecting and Conserving Computers"

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

The Computer Museum History Center is delighted to present 
the following two lectures on computer history:



               "It will not slice a pineapple": 
   The construction of Charles Babbage's Calculating Engine

                       Doron Swade
    Senior Curator of Computing, London Science Museum

               Wednesday, March 3, 4:15 p.m. 
           Stanford University, NEC Auditorium, 
        Gates Computer Science Building, Room B03.


Charles Babbage is widely celebrated as the first pioneer of the computer. 
The designs for his vast mechanical calculating engines are one of the 
startling intellectual achievements of the last century.

Babbage is equally famous for two things: he invented computers, and he 
failed to build them. The reasons for his failures are still hotly debated 
today and the tale of his woes has become a modern parable.  But in the 
absence of a demonstrably working machine, doubt has clouded his reputation. 
Was Babbage an impractical dreamer, or a designer of the highest calibre?  
Could his engines have been built in the previous century, and if so, would 
they have worked?

The Science Museum built a complete Babbage Engine from original designs in 
time for the bicentenary of Babbage's birth in 1991.  This presentation will 
describe the project and how it has revised historical perceptions of the 
great inventor.

For more information, including directions to the event, 
see http://www.computerhistory.org/swade_1



****************************************************************

              Collecting and Conserving Computers

                        Doron Swade
    Senior Curator of Computing, London Science Museum

              Thursday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.
          Building 40, Silicon Graphics, Inc.
                   Mountain View, CA.


Engineers take pride in fixing things, conservators in preserving them, yet
there is a conflict between restoration and conservation.  This presentation
explores the practical and ethical implications of actively preserving 
computers through restoration, reconstruction, physical replication and 
logical simulation.  

Examples are drawn from the major programmes recently undertaken in England, 
including the Manchester `Baby', the Bletchley Park Colossus, the Ferranti 
Pegasus, the Elliott 803, Babbage's Engine, and the Phillips Economics 
Computer, a hydro-mechanical analog machine from the late 1940s.  

The philosophical and practical implications of collecting and conserving 
software, an equally challenging problem, will also be discussed.

For more information, including directions to the event, 
see http://www.computerhistory.org/swade_2



Biographical Note:

Doron Swade is the Senior Curator for Computing and Information Technology
at the Science Museum in London.  He is an electronics engineer and an
historian of computing.  He has published widely on the history of computing
and on curatorship, and written three books, two on Charles Babbage and
one, co-authored, on the Information Age.  His fourth book, "The Cogwheel
Brain," is due out in October this year.  Swade masterminded the
construction of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, which was completed at 
the Science Museum on the bicentenary of Babbage's birth in 1991.



 

--
Dag Spicer
Curator & Manager of Historical Collections
The Computer Museum History Center
Building T12-A
NASA Ames Research Center
Mountain View, CA  94035

Offices: Building T12-A
Exhibit Area: Building 126

Tel: +1 650 604 2578
Fax: +1 650 604 2594
E-m: spicer@tcm.org
WWW: http://www.computerhistory.org

To be placed on our computer history lecture announcement list:
chc@tcm.org.  This month's lecture "Doing Computer History in Internet
Time."  See: http://www.computerhistory.org/ceruzzi

Donations: http://www.computerhistory.org/donor.

History of Computing timeline:
http://www.tcm.org/html/history/timeline/index.html

<spicer@tcm.org>  PGP: 15E31235 (E6ECDF74 349D1667 260759AD 7D04C178)
Personal e-mail: spicer@alumni.stanford.org

S/V T12: HAL