One of the great challenges in writing a non-fiction book is gathering the primary source material. Since I began writing 10 years ago, the quantity and quality of information available on computers and the computer industry via the Web has increased enormously. I’m fortunate to have access to the massive collection of over 2.5 million books and journals in the University of Glasgow Library through my day job but in most cases I can now find the information I need simply by typing some carefully chosen keywords into a search engine and clicking on a few links. It’s amazing to think that only 20 years ago much of the material used in the preparation of this book would have been extremely difficult or in some cases impossible to find. Now anyone with a smartphone and an Internet connection can access it online.
I plan to create a comprehensive list of available online resources at some point in the future. In the meantime, here are a few I’ve found to be particularly useful:-
- Ed Thelen’s list of Documents, Links and Videos on his Antique Computers web site.
- Al Kossow’s huge collection of downloadable computer documents.
- The Computer Conservation Society.
- The Computer History Museum.
- The DigiBarn Computer Museum.
- IBM Archives.
- IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.
- The Lemelson Center Computer Oral History Collection.
The Story of the Computer 