in this
section:

resources

dates













related:

Communication
revolutions

This part of the site provides information on the information technology industry, supplementing discussion elsewhere on the caslon.com.au site regarding publishing, regulation, culture and network management.

It covers -

• key dates - a chronology that offers more detail than the broad media, communications and regulation timeline elsewhere on the site
• IBM - the history of IBM
• Apple - the company that has emphasised 'human-centred computing'
• Microsoft - the 1990s version of the 'Evil Empire', still struggling to grasp the web?
• Netscape
• Dell
• GE
• HP
• ICL
• Oracle
• Philips
• Siemens
• Chips
• precursors - background writing about early computing, from Descartes through Babbage's mechanical Differential Engine to the work in the first half of last century by Turing, von Neumann and others
• Wizards.

We will progressively be adding information on -

• the 'seven dwarfs' - Hewlett Packard, Nixdorf, SGI, Sperry, Data General and other hardware companies
• infrastructure providers such as Ericsson, Siemens, Nokia and ITT
• other software - pointers to writing about other software companies and initiatives such as Xanadu
• open source and open publishing - Linux, GNU, open source and the 'information wants to be free' movement

     introductions

For context there are useful overviews in Computer: A History of the Information Machine (New York: Basic Books 1996) by William Aspray & Martin Campbell-Kelly and in Paul Ceruzzo's A History of Modern Computing (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998). For an industry perspective we commend The International Computer Software Industry: A Comparative Study of Industry Evolution & Structure (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995) edited by David Mowery and From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (Cambridge: MIT Press 2003) by Martin Campbell-Kelly.

For a perspective that embraces business and social aspects we recommend James Cortada's exemplary Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs & Remington Rand & the Industry They Created 1865-1956 (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2000) and his The Computer in the United States: From Laboratory to Market, 1930-60 (Armonk: Sharpe 1993).

As an introduction the essays on the hardware and software industries in Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) edited by David Mowery & Richard Nelson are of considerable value. Technological Competition and the Structure of the Computer Industry (PDF) by Shane Greenstein & Timothy Bresnahan and the latter's The Changing Structure of Innovation in the Computer Industry (PDF) are also important.

Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Science Industries (New York: Free Press 2001) by Alfred Chandler extends the analysis in A Nation Transformed By Information (New York: Oxford Uni Press 2000) and is a 'must read'.

Michael Riordan & Lillian Hoddeson's Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor & the Birth of the Information Age (New York: Norton 1997), Kenneth Flamm's Creating The Computer: Government, Industry & High Technology (Washington: Brookings Institution 1988) and The First Computers: History & Architectures (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000) edited by Raul Rojas & Ulf Hashagen are useful background material. John Markoff's What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking 2005) offers a revisionist - and for us unconvincing - account of the birth of the PC.

They are complemented by Campbell-Kelly's 1995 Development & Structure of the International Software Industry, 1950-1990 (PDF) and 2001 Not Only Microsoft: The Maturing of the Personal Computer Software Industry, 1982-1995 (PDF), and by Alfred Chandler's Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free Press 2001).

Biographical collections abound. They include James Cortada's succinct Historical Dictionary of Data Processing: Biographies (New York: Greenwood 1987) and John Lee's International Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1995).

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