Writing the Design History of Computers

Few academics have researched and written about the design history of recent technology; even fewer about the design history of computing. This area of research has grown since Atkinson first started researching this topic and there is now a developing and growing academic interest in this particular domain of design history. This book chapter uses some new primary research using the Internet Archive to highlight the main issue, before reflecting on the advantages and shortfalls of different historical sources in constructing a design history of computing technology.

The primary research underpinning this reflection on a body of work includes interviews with entrepreneurs, businesspeople and inventors (including Douglas Engelbart (inventor of the computer mouse) and Jeff Hawkins (inventor of the Palm Pilot handheld computer)), computer scientists (Alan Kay and Stu Card, (Xerox PARC), Donna Dubinsky (Palm, Handspring), industrial designers (including Bill Moggridge (designer of the first laptop computer) and Tom Hardy (previously World Head of Design at IBM) and manufacturers (Sony, Fujitsu and others). It also includes visual analysis of published advertising material (including the contents of the archives of IBM, The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California and The National Archive for the History of Computing, University of Manchester) along with secondary research using published texts.