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Computing Applications ACM at 60: a look back in time

Introduction

Tracing the early days of ACM—its landmark accomplishments, its challenges, its goals—in celebration of its first 60 years.
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I am no historian, but we have wonderful colleagues who are. On campus they flock with the humanists, but some still study us geeks. They are less interested in our dreams than the interactions and impulses that evoked them. They seek the foundations of the contemporary history that is created as we focus on technical goals. As our field matures, we all risk losing it as we run headlong forward. At this writing the recent deaths of John Backus and Ken Kennedy and the disappearance at sea of Jim Gray remind us of how fast authoritative memories disappear.

ACM is doing something about that problem. This special section of Communications is a substantial illustration of the work of the ACM History Committee. There have been other efforts, most notably SIGPLAN's History of Programming Languages conferences (HoPL; the third sesquidecennial to be held June 9–10 in San Diego.1) The first two HoPL meetings are remarkably well documented. SIGPLAN brought on board true historians of computing, like Mike Mahoney (Princeton University) and Tim Bergin (American University) and, as a result, the products of those conferences are now reference-quality memories we all cherish.

In 2002, when four Turing Award laureates died within a six-week span,2 the leadership of the Association was shaken by the tax of history's onrushing clock on our collective memory. Hence, the creation of ACM's History Committee.

Its mission seemed huge at first—as we humbly realized the enormity of computing history. Fortunately, there are other institutions and efforts also addressing our history: for example, the Charles Babbage Institute,3 the Computer History Museum,4 and IEEE's Annals of the History of Computing.5 Therefore, an initial decision was to narrow the mission to what the Association can and must address. ACM's History Committee is focusing on the history of the organization itself and the history of its Turing Award and its winners. The first choice is obvious: no one else has the materials or access to record ACM's significant role. The second is acknowledgement of the remarkable success and stature of the Turing Award; as the top award in computing, those entering the field must appreciate the remarkable contributions it recognizes, as well as the high standard that it and ACM represent.

You can see the early products of the committee's efforts at http://history.acm.org: including edited interviews with Turing Award winners and ACM presidents. We hope to continue and expand the list of interviews (http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id= 1141880&dl=ACM). Moreover, before the recent move of ACM's headquarters, two archivists inventoried documents there with an eye toward moving those of value to a formal archive for posterity. Now, at the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Association for Computing Machinery [sic, v.i.], in the fourth year of its History Committee, comes this collection of articles assembled in the spirit of those birthdays. These stories are not direct products of the committee, which thanks all these authors for their contributions.

These eight nuggets from the history of ACM sample all levels: the organization of parent ACM, activities within a few SIGs, technical contributions that may now seem distant, and a review of ACM/IEEE collaboration in education.

You might detect a chain running thoughout the contents. Links along the chain may include your memories of where we have been. I also view them as encouragement for how much further we can go. Having met earlier challenges, we have much more to accomplish.

The first two articles visit the Association's very beginnings: Bernadette Longo reviews the gatherings that led to the creation of ACM, and Atsushi Akera tells the story of one volunteer who gave ongoing life to that name. Charles Care visits the early history of analog computing, which yet survives, though overshadowed by digital.

Haigh, Kaplan, and Seib review the tools available to uncover more history of computing, so more of us can contribute to its record. David Hemmendinger briefly reviews the history of ACM/IEEE computing curricula, and Judy Brown and Steve Cunningham give an abbreviated history of one of ACM's biggest SIGs and biggest conferences: ACM SIGGRAPH.

On the other end of the SIG scale, Chris Edmundson-Yurkanan tells her own story of the rewards of a successful tutorial on networking history presented by SIGCOMM. Finally, Tim Bergin reminds programming-language users, again, of the value of the community's historic roots as told at the HoPL conferences.6

So read and enjoy. Come to HoPL3 at the FCRC077 in San Diego, and stay for the technical meetings in your favorite area where you might meet more dramatis personae—even future laureates. Visit the new Web sites for the Turing Award and the ACM History Committee. And please let the committee know of your interest in helping with history projects for ACM, especially the history hidden among the various SIGs.

This article is available at doi.acm.org/10.1145/1230819.1230833.

    1www.acm.org/sigplan/hopl.

    2Ole-Johan Dahl, John Cocke, Edsger W. Dijkstra, and Kristen Nygaard; the first and last were the 2001 winners.

    3www.cbi.umn.edu.

    4www.computerhistory.org.

    5www.computer.org/portal/site/annals.

    6Tying HoPL back to an aforementioned theme, Fran Allen, the 2006 Turing Award winner, is a keynote speaker at FCRC07.

    7www.acm.org/fcrc/.

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