This book reviews the present understanding of the history of software and establishes an agenda for further research. By exploring this current understanding, the authors identify the fundamental elements of software. The problems and questions addressed in the book range from purely technical to societal issues. Thus, the articles presented offer a fresh view of this history with new categories and interrelated themes, comparing and contrasting software with artefacts in other disciplines, so as to ascertain in what ways software is similar to and different from other technologies.This volume is based on the international conference "Mapping the History of Computing: Software Issues", held in April 2000 at the Heinz Nixdorf Museums Forum in Paderborn, Germany.

The papers in this volume were presented at a conference that was designed to map out historical study needs in one area of the history of computing, namely, software. The Paderbom conference was sponsored by the Heinz Nixdorf Muse- umsForum and co-sponsored by the Charles Babbage Institute and the Heinz Nixdorf Institute of the University of Paderbom. The idea for the conference emerged from the consideration of a larger concept that was to prepare a new handbook on the history of computing. Believing that preparation of the handbook would encounter obstacles in some areas of computing that have not received adequate attention from historians, the originators of the idea of the handbook decided on aseries of mapping conferences to try to overcome the obstacles, of which the Paderbom conference is the first. The organizers of the conference invited a group of historians, sociologists, and computer scientists to present pa- pers and comments about a selected set of issues in the history of software. The organizing committee consisted of William Aspray (Computing Research Asso- ciation, Washington, D. C. ), Martin Campbell-Kelly (University of Warwick, U. K. ), Ulf Hashagen (Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, Paderbom), Reinhard Keil- Slawik (Heinz Nixdorf Institute, University of Paderbom), Michael S. Mahoney (Princeton University) and Arthur L. Norberg (Charies Babbage Institute, Uni ver- sity of Minnesota).

Over the course of several decades, the Pentagon's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) helped transform computing from a cumbersome enterprise based on batch processing to the instantly interactive, graphically rich, highly intelligent computing of today. With the purpose of improving command and control systems for the military, IPTO researchers strengthened time-sharing, laid the groundwork for graphics and parallel processing, contributed to the study of artificial intelligence, and developed the wide-area network that came to be known as the Internet. "Transforming Computer Technology" examines these and other developments at the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency in its heyday between 1962 and 1986. The authors show how Pentagon programs affected significant developments in both computer science and engineering. They analyze the management of the office, the origins and growth of important IPTO programs, and the interaction of the staff with the R & D community. They pay special attention to IPTO's role in executing research at the leading edge of computing and networking and in working with the military to transfer that research into practical use. And they show how, by the 1990s, the research results had been assimilated into systems both for the military and for civilian society.