The Woodstock of Computing

June 12, 2022 9:35 AM

The 1976 Los Alamos Conference: The Woodstock of Computing. For five summer days in 1976, the first generation of computer rock stars had its own Woodstock. Coming from around the world, dozens of computing’s top engineers, scientists, and software pioneers got together to reflect upon the first 25 years of their discipline in the warm, sunny (and perhaps a bit unsettling) climes of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, birthplace of the atomic bomb. After a multi-year recovery and restoration process, the Computer History Museum is delighted to announce it is making available 21 never-before-seen video recordings of this unique conference. You can watch them here.
posted by Westringia F. (8 comments total)

Very cool.
posted by MattD at 11:52 AM on June 12, 2022

I thought I'd recognize more names, but I guess this is primarily the generation that preceded the PC era. I don't think i know more than 6-7.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:33 PM on June 12, 2022

My favorite bits so far are Knuth mentioning maybe making a "coffee table book" and Dijkstra being distracted by thoughts of his wife and almost falling off the stage.
posted by joeyh at 5:03 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

And the "peak moment" of the Conference was "...asking if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing had done during World War II?"

(snip)
The Los Alamos peak moment was the brilliant lecture on the British WW II Colossus computing engines by computer scientist and historian of computing Brian Randell. Colossus machines were special-purpose computers used to decipher messages of the German High Command in WW II.

Based in southern England at Bletchley Park, these giant codebreaking machines regularly provided life-saving intelligence to the allies. Their existence was a closely-held secret during the war and for decades after. Randell’s lecture was—excuse me—a bombshell, one which prompted an immediate re-assessment of the entire history of computing. Observes conference attendee (and inventor of ASCII) IBM’s Bob Bemer, “On stage came Prof. Brian Randell, asking if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing had done during World War II? From there he went on to tell the story of Colossus—that day at Los Alamos was close to the first time the British Official Secrets Act had permitted any disclosures. I have heard the expression many times about jaws dropping, but I had really never seen it happen before.”
posted by aleph at 7:31 PM on June 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

The article links to videos of some of the talks at the International Research Conference on the History of Computing, Los Alamos, Jun 10-15 1976, Los Alamos.

There is a 4-page written report on the conference from Apr 1977
here.

There is a link to a library catalog entry for the 659-page printed conference proceedings, which includes a link 'Borrow It' here.

There s a link to a library catalog entry for another version of the proceedings, "43 audiocassettes in 3 volumes" here.
posted by JonJacky at 10:20 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Brian Randell is super pleased that his lecture has been released.
posted by bifurcated at 3:35 AM on June 13, 2022

It's odd that this event is now so unknown. I am interested in computing history and have read a lot about it, and I can't recall ever seeing this conference or any of its talks/papers cited or even mentioned anywhere.
posted by JonJacky at 8:28 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I guess all the women computer rock stars were busy.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 10:41 AM on June 14, 2022 [1 favorite]