Computer History Museum Prize

The Computer History Museum Prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding book in the history of computing broadly conceived, published during the prior three years. The prize of $1,000 is awarded by SIGCIS, the Special Interest Group for Computers, Information and Society. SIGCIS is part of the Society for the History of Technology. 

In 2012 the prize was endowed in perpetuity through a generous bequest from the estate of Paul Baran, a legendary computer innovator and entrepreneur best known for his work to develop and promote the packet switching approach on which modern networks are built. Baran was a longtime supporter of work on the history of information technology and named the prize to celebrate the contributions of the Computer History Museum to that field. 

 

2024 Winner

Victor Petrov, Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press: 2023).

Balkan Cyberia, Victor Petrov’s history of computing in Bulgaria during the Twentieth Century skillfully and engagingly operates across multiple registers of analysis – from global political economies to regional histories and from detailed stories of individual contributors to cultural history – and diverse geographies – from cities and towns in Bulgaria itself to the “Second World” of Soviet-centered economies to India, Japan, and computing centers in the West. Petrov’s comprehensive approach to his central question, “Why did Bulgaria become such a predominant center for computer production in the decades between 1950 and 1990?” includes a detailed and nuanced account of the role of industrial espionage as industrial policy, an upacking of the complex political economy of what he calls the “Second World” of Soviet-centered economies, and rich accounts of how that political economy shaped interchanges and developments in Bulgarian computing with Japan and India. The result is a global history that both enriches our understandings of computing in multiple geographies, and shows the exciting potential for further studies in this mold.

 

2024 Nomination instructions

Books published in 2021, 2022, and 2023 are eligible for the 2024 prize. Books in translation are eligible for three years following the date of their publication in English. Publishers, authors, and other interested members of the computer history community are invited to nominate books. Please note that books nominated in previous years may be nominated again, provided they have been published in the timeframes specified above. Please send digital and physical copies of the nominated title to each of the committee members listed below, with a postmark no later than April 15, 2024. Please direct any questions to the 2024 committee chair, David Brock, dbrock@computerhistory.org.

 

2024 Prize Committee Members

David Brock (Committee Chair, physical copies of books preferred)

Director of Curatorial Affairs, Computer History Museum

40 Russell Street

Greenfield, MA 01301

dbrock@computerhistory.org

 

Nathan Ensmenger

Associate Professor, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering

Indiana University

Informatics East 226a

901 E. 10th St.

Bloomington, IN 47408

nensmeng@indiana.edu

 

Mar Hicks (physical copies of books preferred)

Associate Professor of Data Science

UVA Data Science

400 Brandon Ave

Charlottesville, VA 22903

mhicks@virginia.edu

 

 

Previous Winners

  • 2009: Christophe Lécuyer, Making Silicon Valley: Innovation and the Growth of High Tech, 1930-1970 (MIT Press, 2006)
  • 2010: Atsushi Akera, Calculating a Natural World: Scientists, Engineers, and Computers During the Rise of U.S. Cold War Research (MIT Press, 2007)
  • 2011: Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010)
  • 2012: Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries:Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile (MIT Press, 2011)
  • 2013: Joseph A. November, Biomedical Computing: Digitizing Life in the United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)
  • 2014: Janet Abbate, Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing (MIT Press, 2012)
  • 2015: Rebecca Slayton, Arguments That Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (MIT Press, 2013)
  • 2016: Dinesh C. Sharma, The Outsourcer: The Story of India's IT Revolution (MIT Press, 2015)
  • 2017: Elizabeth Petrick, Making Computers Accessible: Disability Rights and Digital Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).
  • 2018: Ben Peters, How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (MIT Press, 2016).
  • 2019: Jaroslav Švelch, Gaming the Iron Curtain How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (MIT Press, 2018).
  • 2020: Gerardo Con Diaz, Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America (New Haven: Yale University Press 2019).
  • 2021: Morgan G. Ames, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child (MIT Press, 2019).
  • 2022: Jacob Gaboury, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press, 2021).
  • 2023: Kevin Driscoll, The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media (Yale University Press, 2022).