The History of Computing Library covers a wide and varied range of historical computer technology topics.​

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Programming

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• How Aristotle paved the way for computer logic (Atlantic monthly article)

• In 1843 Ada Lovelace became the first computer programmer (New Yorker article)

• Calculating Ada a BBC documentary on Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage

• How modern symbolic logic replaced Aristotelian logic

• Meet Admiral Grace Hopper, the mother (yes, mother!) of the COBOL programming language

• The CIS COBOL portable compiler technology clearly explained by Peter Brown

• Working as a programmer in the 1970s

• In 1951 Mary Coombs became the first female commercial programmer

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Software

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• The spreadsheet 'killer app' arrives

•  How PCs became programming engines in the 1990s

• The browser 'killer app' arrives  

• Linux ushers in the open source revolution

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Hardware, Networks, Videos​

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• The history of computing devices since the stone age

• Storage technology from punched cards to the cloud

• UK home brew and US PCs make computing personal

• Dial up bulletin board systems (BBSs) in pre-Internet days

• When Ethernet and Token Ring LANs fought it out

• US and UK foundations of the Internet

• How 2-tier client/server was finally beaten

• The history of trackballs!

• Claude Shannon invented digital communications, read all about it

• A MUST see documentary about George Boole

• Great timeline of storage technology developments (identified by Krista Adams)

• USB standards before USB 4.0

• Here's a fine biography of Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine and Analytical Engine (as identified by Lily Casal, one of the young women now involving themselves in STEM) 

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Background

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• What If He Is Right? Tom Wolfe's legendary 1965 'new journalism' article about Marshal Mcluhan and the furore he was causing with his predictions about the social and cultural effects of technology

• The heyday of UK computing in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s

• Women in computing

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