Subject:  Lecture: "Doing computer history in Internet time."
To:       Ames Resident Staff
From:     Dag Spicer, Curator, The Computer Museum History Center
Presenter: Paul Ceruzzi, Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing

                       National Air and Space Museum
                           Smithsonian Institution

                       Tuesday, February 16, 5:30 p.m.

                       Main Auditorium, Building N-201
                          NASA Ames Research Center
                           Mountain View, CA 94035


Historians like to let things settle a bit before doing history, but how
is that possible when the subject of historical inquiry is computing,
which seems to re-invent and redefine itself every few months? The
author, a curator in the Space History Department of the National Air
and Space Museum, will describe his recent attempt to write a
comprehensive history of computing, from the dedication of the ENIAC in
1946 to the commercialization of the World Wide Web.  When he began
writing, the World Wide Web had not even been invented, yet by the time
he submitted a manuscript to the publisher, Microsoft announced
Internet Explorer 4.0!

Ceruzzi believes that one can now take a look back and tell a coherent
story about computing in the last fifty years, even if tomorrow's
headlines threaten to turn it all into a preface to the 'real' story.
Ceruzzi's work at the Smithsonian includes research, writing, planning
exhibits, collecting artifacts, and lecturing on the subjects of
microelectronics, computing, and control as they apply to the practice
of air and space flight.

Ceruzzi is a graduate of Yale University and has a PhD in American
Studies from the University of Kansas. He has been a Fullbright
Scholar, the recipient of a Charles Babbage Institute Research
Fellowship, and a faculty member at Clemson University in South
Carolina. He is the author or co-author of several books on the history
of computing and related issues: Reckoners: The Prehistory of The
Digital Computer (1983);   Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the
Computer Age (1989);   Smithsonian Landmarks in the History of Digital
Computing (1994, with Peggy Kidwell);  A History of Modern Computing
(1998).

Copies of A History of Modern Computing and Beyond the Limits will be
available at the talk for author signature and purchase.

Please RSVP electronically to: mailto:elee@tcm.org or telephone 4-2479.