Using Computers In History

A very practical and accessible guide Based on a highly regarded course the authors have been running for several years Extensive exercises for students to work through Will be the text book on many courses

Recent developments in computer technology are providing historians with new ways to see—and seek to hear, touch, or smell—traces of the past. Place-based augmented reality applications are an increasingly common feature at heritage sites and museums, allowing historians to create immersive, multifaceted learning experiences. Now that computer vision can be directed at the past, research involving thousands of images can recreate lost or destroyed objects or environments, and discern patterns in vast datasets that could not be perceived by the naked eye. Seeing the Past with Computers is a collection of twelve thought-pieces on the current and potential uses of augmented reality and computer vision in historical research, teaching, and presentation. The experts gathered here reflect upon their experiences working with new technologies, share their ideas for best practices, and assess the implications of—and imagine future possibilities for—new methods of historical study. Among the experimental topics they explore are the use of augmented reality that empowers students to challenge the presentation of historical material in their textbooks; the application of seeing computers to unlock unusual cultural knowledge, such as the secrets of vaudevillian stage magic; hacking facial recognition technology to reveal victims of racism in a century-old Australian archive; and rebuilding the soundscape of an Iron Age village with aural augmented reality. This volume is a valuable resource for scholars and students of history and the digital humanities more broadly. It will inspire them to apply innovative methods to open new paths for conducting and sharing their own research.

Information and communications technology is now an essential tool for the historian and for anyone engaging in historical study. Today's 'history workstation' includes computers, modems, scanners, printers, digital cameras and a wide range of software applications to access the World Wide Web and to analyse historical sources. Sonja Cameron and Sarah Richardson provide a clear, jargon-free introduction which demystifies the computing skills needed for historical research. This step-by-step guide covers all aspects of history and computing including: - Presentation: from word-processing an article which conforms to scholarly protocols to presenting a slide show. - History and the World Wide Web: hints and tips on accessing and evaluating the wide range of historical material available on the internet. - Databases: a clear introduction which guides you through the process of creating your own database of historical sources. - Spreadsheets: a lucid explanation of basic quantitative methods, data analysis, graphing and charting. - Digitised text and images: help on analysing digitised text, creating images and web pages. The text is supported throughout by worked examples using historical sources, comprehensive illustrations, a detailed glossary and signposts to further study where appropriate. Using Computers in History is an indispensable aid to all those studying and researching history. Students, family and local historians, and history enthusiasts will all find this book informative and easy-to-use.

This volume provides a history of the computer which now comes properly up to the ubiquitous age, with new chapters that look at globalization, platformitization and regulation, allowing readers to engage with the more recent takeover by computers in their historical perspective. With the growing ubiquity of computers, the subject is one of interest to many students and this will feature in history of science and technology courses, and world history courses as well as ones specifically on computing. Books on the history of computing tend to be quite technically or business focused, this covers the social and cultural history as well.

From the first digital computer to the dot-com crash—a story of individuals, institutions, and the forces that led to a series of dramatic transformations. This engaging history covers modern computing from the development of the first electronic digital computer through the dot-com crash. The author concentrates on five key moments of transition: the transformation of the computer in the late 1940s from a specialized scientific instrument to a commercial product; the emergence of small systems in the late 1960s; the beginning of personal computing in the 1970s; the spread of networking after 1985; and, in a chapter written for this edition, the period 1995-2001. The new material focuses on the Microsoft antitrust suit, the rise and fall of the dot-coms, and the advent of open source software, particularly Linux. Within the chronological narrative, the book traces several overlapping threads: the evolution of the computer's internal design; the effect of economic trends and the Cold War; the long-term role of IBM as a player and as a target for upstart entrepreneurs; the growth of software from a hidden element to a major character in the story of computing; and the recurring issue of the place of information and computing in a democratic society. The focus is on the United States (though Europe and Japan enter the story at crucial points), on computing per se rather than on applications such as artificial intelligence, and on systems that were sold commercially and installed in quantities.

This book is a collection of refereed invited papers on the history of computing in education from the 1970s to the mid-1990s presenting a social history of the introduction and early use of computers in schools. The 30 papers deal with the introduction of computer in schools in many countries around the world: Norway, South Africa, UK, Canada, Australia, USA, Finland, Chile, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, Israel and Poland. The authors are not professional historians but rather people who as teachers, students or researchers were involved in this history and they narrate their experiences from a personal perspective offering fascinating stories.

This history of computing focuses not on chronology (what came first and who deserves credit for it) but on the actual architectures of the first machines that made electronic computing a practical reality. The book covers computers built in the United States, Germany, England, and Japan. It makes clear that similar concepts were often pursued simultaneously and that the early researchers explored many architectures beyond the von Neumann architecture that eventually became canonical. The contributors include not only historians but also engineers and computer pioneers. An introductory chapter describes the elements of computer architecture and explains why "being first" is even less interesting for computers than for other areas of technology. The essays contain a remarkable amount of new material, even on well-known machines, and several describe reconstructions of the historic machines. These investigations are of more than simply historical interest, for architectures designed to solve specific problems in the past may suggest new approaches to similar problems in today's machines. Contributors Titiimaea F. Ala'ilima, Lin Ping Ang, William Aspray, Friedrich L. Bauer, Andreas Brennecke, Chris P. Burton, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Paul Ceruzzi, I. Bernard Cohen, John Gustafson, Wilhelm Hopmann, Harry D. Huskey, Friedrich W. Kistermann, Thomas Lange, Michael S. Mahoney, R. B. E. Napper, Seiichi Okoma, Hartmut Petzold, Raúl Rojas, Anthony E. Sale, Robert W. Seidel, Ambros P. Speiser, Frank H. Sumner, James F. Tau, Jan Van der Spiegel, Eiiti Wada, Michael R. Williams

Using Computers in History is designed to introduce students to historical computing through practical workshop exercises. With topics such as the pattern of nineteenth century emigration from the UK, the performance of the American and German economies in the 1930s and the Lancashire cotton industry, Lloyd-Jones and Lewis explain and illustrate the possible uses of the computer for the historian. Using Computers in History: * raises awareness of the use of computers as an important tool for the historian * provides a practical introduction to basic computer terminology * includes high quality diagrams of the screen displays which should appear at each stage * examines the use of spreadsheets and how to design and work with them * discusses the different software packages available, concentrating on Microsoft Excel 4 * includes spreadsheet exercises based around a range of historical data sets * explores the use of databases * shows how to construct them * gives guidelines for further study * prompts students to apply the skills they have learnt to a number of examples