I’m sharing this little stash of computer memorabilia (dated from 1949-1954) because in its age it is so, well, “fresh”and new and uncomplicated–and that’s because it was, relative to what we experience now.  In 1954 there about 10,000 people working in the field of computing; 61 years later the growth in involvement of people working in the field is perhaps three orders of magnitude–the growth in the sheer volume of printed and digitally-circulated material is probably somewhere on the order of the differences between post-Gutenberg European printing and the printing industry in the year 1990.  The changes are spectacular, and they seem to be so much more appreciable when one looks at the foundation efforts from the early years, some of which can be seen and represented in documents like those that follow.

First up is this computer-printed list of attendees for “Dinner Honoring Seminar on Computation, IBM Homestead, December 8, 1949. It is a hand-stapled, four-page list with some big names in the history of computing including Brillouin, Eckert, Grosch, Hamming, Tukey, Yowell, and others. 

The next document is the draft consideration for the Constitution of the ACM and is a 3-page cover later dated July 1953 regarding the voting on the new Constitution and also on officers of the ACM. It also details printing costs and distribution of the Proceedings, and other associated housekeeping, including a 3-page offset-printed ballot for voting on the Constitution.