6 collections related to Computers -- History

The Douglas E. Hammond Collection of Computer Manuals contains manuals for computer software and hardware primarily created by IBM. There is a small segment of manuals for software and hardware created by the Applied Data Research group. The manuals range in date from 1962 to 1983. Some major types of items covered include virtual machines, operating systems, customer information control systems and information systems. They are primarily targeted to the IBM mainframe platform. Douglas E. Hammond was a former employee of IBM who worked with IBM mainframes and collected these manuals from the early computer era. They date as far back as 1962 and go through 1983. These manuals showcase the type of products that IBM was creating during the exponential rise of computer usage and the development of the Internet. As is well known, the computer as well as IBM as a company have evolved and changed greatly over time. The items in this collection are evidence of both the change over a two decade period. They also add to a more complete history of computing and simulation. Hammond also collected some manuals from the Applied Data Research group that have threads of connection to some of the IBM manuals, such as the subject of COBOL, the Common Business-Oriented Language, a very early programming language. Less

The John Ptak Computer Science Book Collection contains pamphlets, reports, journal articles, correspondence, software and hardware documentation, and other written material as well as more than 500 monographs and serials which are individually cataloged. The individually cataloged items are identified in the NC State University Libraries catalog as part of the John Ptak Computer Science Book Collection; they are not included in this description. The collection dates range from 1891 to 1987, but the bullk of the material is from 1940-1965. Notable authors and organizations represented include Carlo Arcelli, the Association for Computing Machines (ACM), Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Robert J. Baron, Gordon Becker, Harry Blum, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Walter M. Elsasser, George E. Forsythe, General Electric, J. K. Hawkins, Hewlett-Packard, Alston S. Householder, International Business Machines (IBM), William Karush, Felix Klein, Clifford J. Maloney, Jacob Marschak, Franco Modigliani, Frederick Mosteller, Ulric Neisser, W. V. Parker, Hans Reissner, Remington Rand, Inc., and Heinz Von Foerster. Topics covered include aeronautics, artificial intelligence, biology, biometrics, communications, computer science, electrical engineering, immunology, information retrieval, linguistics, logic, machine translation, mathematics, statistics, and technocracy. The majority of the material is written in English, though German, French, and Russian are also represented. John Ptak was the proprietor of J. F. Ptak Books, Maps, and Prints in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The store specialized in used, rare, and antiquarian manuscripts, reprints, journals, maps, and prints in mathematics and the sciences. Less

The Jon Doyle papers contain letters and correspondence, published academic articles, drafts of these articles, books, journals, magazines, lectures, autobiographical writing, and other materials related to Jon Doyle's career as an computer scientist and academic, beginning with his undergraduate work at the University of Houston in the 1970s and continuing to the present. Jon Doyle is an emeritus faculty member in the NC State University Department of Computer Science who specializes in the study of Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Agents. His research is especially concerned with self-government and logics of belief, and integrates elements of philosophy, physics, economics, psychology, and computability, with reflections on other disciplines. During his career, Doyle has been affiliated with the University of Houston, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and North Carolina State University. Less