Professor Brian Randell and the History of Computing

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.