IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

Five articles resulting from the Appropriating America, Making Europe Conference (held in Amsterdam, 15-17 January 2009) are introduced in the light of the existing literature in American studies and the contrasting approaches of the history of postwar reconstruction and Cold War history. All five articles convey the tension between hegemonic and consensus interpretation. More than that, the set o... View full abstract»

Drawing on work from business, social, and labor history, this article reinterprets the early domestic US computer industry in its broader economic and political context. Contrary to popular imagination, the early computer industry emerges as one devoted primarily to government business, liberal in its political leanings, and with a paternalist corporate culture profoundly shaped by the threat of ... View full abstract»

After World War II, Antoni¿n Svoboda returned to Czechoslovakia with experience in building analog computers, a keen interest in digital computing technology, and aspirations to establish a computer industry in his homeland. Svoboda's original ideas were further developed by his students and colleagues and reflected in the design of SAPO, the first Czechoslovakian computer, in the 1950s. View full abstract»

Paradoxically, at the height of the Cold War, the Eastern and Western Blocs became increasingly technologically entangled. From 1964 onward, the German Democratic Republic drew greatly from US companies as role models when building a national computer industry. Numerous challenges and conflicts arose from appropriating knowledge and artifacts while politically rejecting the society in which they o... View full abstract»

The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) was born as a nongovernmental federation with the main goal of bringing together computer professionals from countries in the East and West. This article examines the Cold War context of the IFIP's origins and the mechanisms its founders used to reconcile computing and politics and to construct computing as an international discipline. View full abstract»

Current views on the programming language Algol assume its European origins. However, the inability to exchange information between computers affected both sides of the Atlantic. Whereas Algol promoters sought to create one universal programming language, other approaches sought to preserve a variety of languages and create a general translation system. Therefore, the polarity was not between prog... View full abstract»