Further resources
This page provides some directions to material produced or located elsewhere. Note also that a very useful annotated sampler for print and online resources (worldwide in scope, and covering social, technical and economic aspects of the history of computing) is Tom Haigh's Computer History File.
Print and online sources
Appendix B of the NAHC catalogue lists guides and bibliographies in the history of computing in general, whilst Appendix C gives a short overview of works on the history of British computing published to 2000. The Computer History File, once more, provides a global overview of the field with useful annotations.
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Archives
Details of other British archives holding relevant material appear in Appendix A to the NAHC catalogue. This information will be updated as time allows. Note also that the Computer Conservation Society now maintains an index to the ICL Archive held by the Science Museum at Blyth House.
The Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, USA, is the principal North American institution dedicated to archiving and documenting the history of computing. Its website includes a list of research collections at other institutions in the USA, and is also notable for its collection of oral history transcripts.
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Organisations
The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) maintains a Special Interest Group on Computers, Information, and Society (SIGCIS). This informal body is probably the largest international grouping of academic historians of computing. The group now operates its own email list (see below.)
The Computer Conservation Society is a specialist group of the British Computer Society, focusing on the investigation, documentation, conservation and reconstruction of computers (mostly pre-1970) in the UK. Members organise regular speaker meetings, and have been responsible for several notable re-creations of individual early British computers.
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Email lists
The JISCmail list history-of-computing-uk, created for the NAHC in 1998, is still in existence. Traffic has been light in recent years, although the list retains many of its subscribers.
SIGCIS (see under 'Organisations' above) now operates its own email list. Membership is in no way limited to members of the Group, and includes historians of computing from senior faculty to graduate student level. For further information please contact the list manager, Thomas Haigh.
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Journals
The main active journal devoted to the field (US-based, international in scope) is IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. More general journals which publish articles in the field include Technology and Culture (the journal of SHOT), History and Technology and Business History Review. The Charles Babbage Institute maintains the peer-reviewed continuous publication Iterations: an interdisciplinary journal of software history. Note also the increasing emergence of publications centred on user culture, such as the peer-reviewed web journal Game Studies.
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Museums, exhibits and artefact study
The Science Museum, London, has among its permanent exhibits an area covering the broad narrative history of computation, including the fully-functioning machine constructed from Charles Babbage's Difference Engine Number 2 plans, installed in 1991. The Museum's 'Making the Modern World' gallery also covers computers in its survey of the relationship between technology and recent everyday life. The Museum has substantial artefact holdings related to computer technology.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester's public displays include the 1998 rebuild of the Small Scale Experimental Machine ('Manchester Baby'), the first electronic digital stored-program computer, and a portion of Douglas Hartree's differential analyser from the 1930s. The Museum is currently planning a new gallery devoted to the history of computing.
The Museum of Computing, Swindon, is a relatively new foundation focusing mainly on the 'personal' systems of the 1970s onwards, with collections of hardware, software and print literature.
The Computer Museum at Bletchley Park (Retrobeep) houses a collection of computers from various periods, mostly operational and available for visitor access.
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