As computers have become ubiquitous in society, the history of computing has chronicled the development of machines. It has largely overlooked, however, the ghost in the machine - the software that creates and restricts its operations. While a small group of scholars has emerged over the past two decades in the history of computing that has published important works analyzing hardware technologies, there has been no comparable scholarship addressing the largely invisible evolution of software development.
New software programs build upon those from the past, and often are constrained by them in certain ways, much as the growth of coral is limited by the coral reef. Historical records of these developments still exist, but are dispersed, unorganized, and difficult to find. As the software developers and practitioners of the early post-World War II era advance in age, the opportunity for collecting, developing, and using primary resources to write the history of software technology will increasingly diminish.
This grant - awarded to the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) - supports a multi-faceted effort using webbased technologies to collect and disseminate information on the history of software to expand understanding and facilitate quality scholarship in this field. CBI is accomplishing this goal through a series of initiatives to address the history of software from its origins in the late-1940s to the present. These include an historical dictionary of software technology and terminology, an oral history initiative to interview pioneering software developers, and an on-line journal of software history. CBI will publish the dictionary, journal, and oral interview transcripts on the World Wide Web.
The Charles Babbage Institute will also establish a research network and review process to produce the dictionary component. This network will integrate technical practitioners, managers, historians, and archivists and serve as a model for developing and disseminating resources in the history of technology and science.
