Welcome from the Board Chair

Welcome to the IT History Society. I am delighted you are here, and I hope you will consider this an open invitation to participate, contribute, and help shape what comes next. I want to hear your ideas, and I hope we can build great things together!

ITHS began in 1977, and over the years our Board and Trustees included luminaries such as the founders of Cray, Gartner, Atari, Internet Archive (Wayback Machine), VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet), the co-inventor of RAID (multi-disk storage technology), the author of Turing's Cathedral and Darwin Among the Machines, and many other icons.

I joined the Board in 2013 when Gideon Gartner invited me to take over his seat. After 12 years of service, my colleagues appointed me to Chair in 2025. During my tenure, my goal is to expand what the Society offers its members, while sharpening our focus on the parts of IT history that most need careful human attention.

As we reach to our future:

• We are adjusting our curatorial goals to focus on Unsung Heroes. These are the people, ideas, and relationships that shaped computing but were never fully credited or recognized.
• Our work-in-progress database of Hardware, Software, and Companies will undergo major improvements as we rethink its taxonomy, remove duplicative content, and add major content which was previously absent.
• The Board is transitioning several long-serving members into Emeritus roles, and welcoming new leadership with more recent industry and academic experience to help guide the Society’s next phase.
• Perhaps most importantly, we are creating more activities for members — through live meetings, and the opportunity to guide our Society through committees focused on curation, programming, publishing, membership, and development.

Thank you for your interest, and I look forward to the conversations ahead!