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. 

Nominations are now open for the 2025 award. Please note the instructions below, as we are following a new procedure.

2025 Nomination instructions

Books published in 2022, 2023, and 2024 are eligible for the 2025 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 fill out the Google Form and then send both digital and physical copies of the nominated title to each of the committee members, with a postmark no later than April 30, 2025. After you complete the Google Form, you will be shown a confirmation page with the committee members' addresses. If you run into technical problems, please contact SIGCIS Co-Chair Liz Petrick, ep20@rice.edu. Please direct any other questions to the 2025 committee chair, Mar Hicks, mhicks@virginia.edu.

Google Form

https://forms.gle/L91wB6jGgVZZx6m47 

 

2025 Prize Committee Members

Mar Hicks (Chair)

David Brock

Sarah T Roberts

 

 

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).
  • 2024: Victor Petrov, Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023).