Computer History Museum

In this oral history, Alan and Henrietta Leiner tell about the work that they did for the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. at the National Bureau of Standards, where three pioneering computers were designed. In 1950 the first of these computers, the SEAC, was put into operation. It operated successfully for many years, using programs that were stored within the machine. In 1952 the second computer, the DYSEAC, was completed and was installed in a trailer van, thus making it a mobile computer. It was capable of interacting in real time with a variety of external devices, including the SEAC. In 1959 these capabilities were expanded in the PILOT, whose system included a network of three independent computers capable of working together concurrently on a common problem. Alan Leiner and his staff devised the logical design of these pioneering computers. He and Henrietta Leiner subsequently undertook a second career, investigating the computing structures in the human brain, which led to a surprising discovery about the brain structures that contribute to the cognitive capabilities of humans.

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVCAM
Catalogue number
102618634
Leiner (Alan and Henrietta) oral history

While working at IBM Research in the 1970s, Moshe Zloof developed Query by Example (QBE), a database query method created for use with relational databases. Over the course of his career at IBM Research, Hewlett-Packard, and various startups, Zloof expanded and further developed QBE as well as applications related to the graphical query language. In this interview, recorded at Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, on September 27, 2007, Zloof briefly describes his early years in Iraq and Israel, followed by an overview of his years working as a software researcher and his forays into entrepreneurship and tech startups. The discussion includes the reasons QBE was never aggressively pursued as a commercial product and the tech startup climate in Silicon Valley during the dot com crash in the late twentieth century. Zloof concludes with a description of his current work.

Type
Document
Format
PDF
Catalogue number
102630484
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Ted Johnson begins his oral history by talking about his early life in Iron Mountain, Michigan. He explains the importance of his Swedish background, his enjoyment of music and his interest in going to MIT for architecture and engineering. Thanks to a scholarship, that ambition became possible. Unfortunately, due to an illness, Johnson was able to attend MIT for only five months before moving to a sanatorium for two years to recover his health. His scholarship still intact, Johnson then decided to continue his schooling at Caltech. Johnson then explains his next step: attending Harvard Business School. He discusses his time at Harvard, where he was also able to work at Lincoln Labs, and how he first became interested in Digital Equipment Corporation. After his graduation from Harvard, Johnson began working for DEC. Throughout the interview, he tells anecdotes and stories from his time at DEC. He talks about DEC’s business strategies, their products and the important people who shaped the company. He also discusses DEC’s goals and how they changed over the time he was with them.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102630490
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Edward (Ed) Fredkin describes his early childhood and school experiences, then covers his college years and his work at the MIT Lincoln Laboratories and BB&N.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102630504
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Doug Altenbern was a pioneer in the computer service bureau industry. After he was worked in marketing and then in sales departments with Plough Incorporated, Doug moved into data processing when IBM presented the opportunity to attend their programming school as a result of his taking IBM’s Programmer Aptitude Test. It didn’t take Doug long to figure out that this is where his life’s work would be most enjoyable and rewarding. He had taken typing in high school and his keyboarding skills served him well in both the Air Force and later as a coder. Through a series of fortunate moves, ultimately Doug became a top manager of a computer service bureau and owned his own successful service bureau, Endata, in Nashville, Tennessee. Doug continues to be involved as an advisor in the computer field as well as a board member of many public and private enterprises. He and his wife, Dee, travel extensively, and he’s the proud father of three, two of whom are physicians, and a grandson, Doug III, known as “The Computer Guy” in Nashville.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102630656
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At Bell Laboratories in 1977, Ken Thompson (best known as the co-creator of the Unix operating system) and Joe Condon designed and built Belle, a dedicated chess-playing machine connected to a minicomputer. Belle's custom hardware and endgame database revolutionized computer chess.

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVCAM
Catalogue number
102630664
Thompson (Ken) oral history

Len Shustek reviews his educational background in computer science (master and doctor of philosophy, Stanford University) by way of physics (bachelor and master of science, Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY). After graduation, he joined the faculty at Carnegie-Mellon University as an assistant professor of computer science. In 1979, he co-founded Nestar Systems Inc., an early producer of networked client-server computer systems. In 1986, he co-founded Network General Corporation, a manufacturer of network analysis tools, notably The Sniffer. He now teaches occasionally as a consulting professor at Stanford University, and is a partner at VenCraft, a small "angel financing" venture capital fund.

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVCAM
Catalogue number
102635811
Shustek, Len (Leonard J.) oral history

Former NASA guidance and navigation engineer Myron Kayton discusses the use of computers in spaceflight, particularly in the Mercury, Germini, Apollo, and shuttle programs.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102635830
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Michael Stonebraker has been one of the most creative innovators and serial entrepreneurs in the relational database management field (and in other software areas). He was a primary player (along with Gene Wong) in the design and development of INGRES while at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s and in founding of the Ingres Corporation with Gene and Larry Rowe in the early 1980s. Ingres became a major player in the RDBMS marketplace competing against Oracle and the other significant companies in the field. In the early 1990s he was the leader in creating Postgres and Illustra which extended the use of the relational structure into areas other than business data. Then he was involved as an executive with ASK, Cohera, Vertica Systems and Streambase. He continues to be an active leader in a multi university technology project in the New England region.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102635858
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Type
Document
Catalogue number
102636414
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John Rollins describes his 32 years as CEO of AZTECH Software Corporation (initially named AZTECH Corporation) and how the company transitioned through six generations of technology platforms from punched cards to the Web while continuing to grow and serve its niche market of associations. He discusses the educational background that prepared him to be a successful entrepreneur, describes how the company came to focus on their market niche and describes the company culture which was so instrumental to its continuing success over such a long period. Made at Jeffries & Co.

Type
Document
Format
PDF
Catalogue number
102638916
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Bruce Ray is the president of Wild Hare Computer Systems, Inc. Boulder, Colorado. Established in 1971, Wild Hare has ridden different facets of the computer industry -- software products, custom programming, workstations, PCs, minicomputers and midrange systems -- with a master strategy that Ray simply defines as "for Wild Hare to continuing having fun." A self-confessed computerholic since high school in the 1960s, he took a gift for programming and a natural penchant for solution-oriented thinking and tied it to a new generation of companies arriving in the late 1960s -- in particular, one called Data General. Ray and his constantly shifting, ever adapting coterie of programmers danced on the fringes of Data General's own ups and downs over four decades. They often devised systems, enhancements, and networks that outperformed DG, leading to what Ray terms a love-hate relationship. Wild Hare faced the abyss more than once as the computer industry evolved, platforms came and went, and as companies and products were assimilated. The company sometimes shrank to a handful of consultants, but Ray always managed to step back and retrench and in that way personified many of the smaller entrepreneurs of the day.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102639050
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Harper Thorpe has had an impact on the development of innovative marketing channels. During his 22 year career with Hewlett Packard from 1977 to 1999, he spearheaded the use of independent software vendors (ISVs) and Value-Added Resellers (VARs). He helped to move HP from a predominantly instrument-focused company with a direct sales force to becoming a major competitor in the minicomputer and desktop computer businesses by offering customers solutions to business problems instead of just hardware. Harper’s model of sales distribution has been copied by many of HP’s original competitors. At the time of this interview, Harper was President and CEO of Sonic Eagle, Inc., a real estate technology company, which was later sold to First American Title Company.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102639052
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Five interviews about the IBM 305 RAMAC computer and disk drive. James N. Porter is the interviewer for all five sessions. An appendix containing supplemental articles, reports, and other materials is also available with the transcripts of these interviews. The interviews are as follows: Video Interview 1: RAMAC Planning: Louis D. Stevens, John M. (Jack) Harker, and Thomas G Leary [00:19 to 49:10] Video Interview 2: RAMAC Development: Louis D. Stevens, John M. (Jack) Harker and Alan F. Shugart [49:30 to 1:20:34] Video Interview 3: Advanced Disk File: Louis D. Stevens, John M. (Jack) Harker and Alan F. Shugart [1:21:12 to 1:49:02] Video Interview 4: RAMAC Hardware: Louis D. Stevens, William Crooks and Norman Vogel [1:49:04 to 2:30:48] Video Interview 5: RAMAC Servomechanical: Louis D. Stevens and Wesley Edward Dickinson [2:33:00 to 3:00:28] Appendix - supplemental articles, reports, and other materials related to the interviews above.

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVD
Catalogue number
102651515
RAMAC oral history project

"Making Applications Happen" discussion between Bob MacDonald and Phil White. 68 scanned pages.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102653332
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Marty Browne was one of the first employees hired by Sandy Kurtzig, Founder and CEO of ASK Computer Systems. Kurtzig envisioned and developed MANMAN, a computer system for manufacturers to run their operations. The system was first offered in the mid 1970s as a timesharing service from Tymshare. Then Kurtzig formed ASK, which offered MANMAN on the Hewlett-Packard (HP) minicomputer and then ported it to the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) minicomputer. Browne was hired when Kurtzig was running the company out of her basement. The company saw meteoric growth in the 1970s and 1980s as more and more manufacturers automated their operations and finances. This interview discusses Browne’s upbringing in the small town of Medford, Oregon, where he lettered in three sports in high school; his stint at Stanford, where he most enjoyed math, philosophy and creative writing; his temporary job that led to his introduction to Sandy Kurtzig; his career at ASK, where, for 20 years, he focused primarily on managing the programming staff for MANMAN using modular programming techniques; and his ventures since leaving the company in 1994.

Type
Document
Format
PDF
Catalogue number
102653932
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This oral history recounts the life and contributions of Lewis Terman in his own words. The son of a pioneer in Radio Electronics, Fred Terman, Lewis Terman also found his way into research in leading edge electronics technology. He describes his early years growing up – first in he East, and then in Palo Alto. He attended Stanford University as an undergrad and eventually earned a PhD from Stanford in 1960. He took a position in IBM research where he made contributions to a number of technologies and products. His early research at Stanford and IBM involved the study and modeling of surface states in MOS devices. He later made contributions in both devices and systems. After leaving IBM, he served a number of positions in IEEE, including President.

Type
Document
Catalogue number
102653943
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This unusually detailed interview covers Alfredo Rego from his childhood in Guatemala to his coming to the U.S. to get a degree at the University of Texas. It then explores his technical programming work, first in Guatemala and then in the U.S. focused on the use of HP minicomputers and on the use of IMAGE, an HP database management system. He describes the formation of Adager with Rene Woc and the ongoing development and use of the Adager software system to enable much more efficient use of IMAGE to provide database structure independence for applications. Along the way, Alfredo discusses a wide range of personal experiences including skiing in the Olympics, home schooling his children and now analyzing the mechanics of skiing in hard packed or icy surfaces. The one constant seems to be his creative problem solving skills and his willingness to approach anyone and ask for their help in learning something new.

Type
Document
Format
PDF
Catalogue number
102654042
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John Phillips is one of the cofounders of Creative Socio-Medics, a provider of specialized hardware and software services in the human services field, particularly in the behavioral health field. After talking briefly about his background and education, Phillips describes his early career and the influences that served as the foundation for his later work. As part of an overview of the history of Creative Socio-Medics, he describes how and why it was founded, early clients and service models, the merge with Advanced Computer Techniques (ACT), and how the service bureau, VAR (value added reseller), and behavioral health industries evolved over the years. The discussion provides insights into the computing industry services and structures between the 1960s and 1980s. Lastly, Phillips explains his involvement in the trade association group ADAPSO and its role in and influence on the industry in the 1980s.

Type
Document
Format
PDF
Catalogue number
102654043
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Webb McKinney was an executive in Hewlett Packard over many years and involved in various efforts to build software to run on HP instruments, specialized equipment and eventually on minicomputers and personal computers. His recollections illustrate how the decentralized operation of many of the HP products led to multiple developments of both minicomputers and personal computers with conflicting architectures and business models. While these competing technologies would get resolved over time, HP was often late to market and never really focused its computer software on the broad personal usage market. HP wanted to differentiate its hardware platforms through its unique software, but the market migrated to a Microsoft Windows platform and neither the customers nor the software producers were prepared to go a separate route.

Type
Document
Format
PDF
Catalogue number
102654051
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