Abstract
Professor Brian Randell had an enormous impact on the creation of the discipline of the history of computing. His publication, in 1975, of The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers, set a high standard of scholarship. It also established a paradigm of the history of computing, which began with the work of Charles Babbage and ended with the introduction of several stored-program, electronic computers in the U.K. and the United States around 1950. That paradigm was not comprehensive, but Professor Randell played a role in filling the gaps that remained, including the history of software, and information about the once-secret British “Colossus.” It has remained a task for subsequent generations of historians to chronicle the development of computing science and technology in the following decades.
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Ceruzzi, P.E. (2011). Professor Brian Randell and the History of Computing. In: Jones, C.B., Lloyd, J.L. (eds) Dependable and Historic Computing. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6875. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24541-1_13
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