There’s an old computing maxim that one should “always mount a scratch monkey”. The most commonly found explanation is that of the Jargon File (and thus the New Hacker’s Dictionary), and while the story is amusing, it is also fairly inaccurate. Recently on a mailing list, a person who was actually involved explained [...]

From the Too Surreal to be Fiction Department: The Society of American Archivists has decided to delete the archive of their own mailing list! [via BoingBoing]
I hadn’t even heard of the SAA, or I’d have joined many years ago, as I’m very interested in archiving computer history.

I was pleasantly surprised today to receive email from NASA regarding my FOIA request. They sent me PDF files of recent editions (November 2005) of the manuals I requested on the HAL/S programming languages and compilers, which are used for the Space Shuttle software. Since these manuals are in the public domain, I [...]

I’ve been trying to get a copy of the HAL/S Language Specification for some time. HAL/S is the programming language used for the on-board software of the Space Shuttle. A contact at NASA was able to provide me with a copy of the book Programming in HAL/S, which is a tutorial introduction to [...]

This morning a group of Computer History Museum volunteers went on a tour of the USS Pampanito, a WWII-era Balao class Fleet submarine moored in San Franciso. The normal tour is very interesting, and I’d definitely encourage anyone interested in naval history and technology to go, but for us the highlight was a specially-arranged [...]

This evening I went to 360 Revolution, the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of IBM System/360 held at the Computer History Museum. There were very good talks by Bob Evans and Dr. Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr..