what's in a name, 1958

What is your reply when someone asks your profession? Computing Engineer? Numerical Analyst? Data Processing Specialist? To say "Computer" sounds like a machine, and "Programmer" has been confused with "Coder" in the public mind (if your particular segment of the public knows what you are talking about at all!)

It would help our profession to be widely recognized if it had a brief, definitive, and distinctive name. This should be general enough to cover a variety of subfields--from numerical analysis to data processing, but specific enough to imply that computing applications are involved. Consider the solid professional sound of such terms as "Petroleum Engineer" or "Nuclear Physicist." What can we use that will be equally clear-cut--and at least half as impressive? So far our ideas have been supremely uninspired. Any suggestions? (signed) Editors of DATA-LINK (Los Angeles ACM Chapter Newsletter)

[Several names have been suggested to represent various phases of our profession. Though the sug- gestions are inevitablty facetious I list them for your attention: Turingineer, Turologist, Flow-Charts-man, Applied Meta-Mathematician and Applied Epistomologist.--Editor] | acm april 1958, letters to the editor

it took me several tries to pronounce turingineer, but i have it now. one might add: spreadsheet-man

one suggested: "hypologist" for the man and "hypology" for the field. (1959)

Since it is common practice to name a scientific profession by some descriptive Greek root .. | p.a.zaphyr, westinghouse electric corp.

it seems acm opened there archive a little bit as there are more documents of the early days freely available; which is a nice and welcome approach.

computer networks in japan, 1976, yoshimi teshigawara

This report was supported by an IBM Corporation grant to THE ALOHA SYSTEM

computer communication networks, approaches, objectives, and performance considerations, stephen r. kimbleton, g. michael schneider

Preparation of this paper was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research, Information Systems Program, under Contract N00014-75-C-0815 (NR 049-311).

it's nice to start the day by reading a true humanized story | thanks to short notes!

the hook at short notes is that schoonschip

.. is possibly the first software ever that helped its author (Martinus J.G. Veltman) win the Nobel Prize.

i don't know, but as other get the turing price and not the nobel one i guess that can be right. you need to be a physicist or maybe biologist dealing with big databases to be counted in there.

reading veltman's autobiography is a nice read and mayeb a hint for al those who are to scared to talk humanly.

i acquired my knowledge of electronics from the local plumber ... My only measuring instrument was my right index finger. If I touched a sensitive connection the radio would produce a hum. If a connection had the correct high voltage (about 200 V) I would get a shock. Commercially I was a failure, as I would usually not dare to ask money for my services ...

I then asked him if he could give me some advice, to which he answered: "don't make mistakes". I thought this funny, and started to laugh, but that was not appreciated by Lee, who took some moments to teach me the seriousness of this enterprise. Well, even if in the making of computer programs the not making of errors is usually the main problem, I still feel that I did not really need that advice! ...

In the meantime, just prior to going to the US, our son Hugo was born. He now runs a restaurant called Solstice in Los Angeles. If I want a really good dinner that is where I go. I hope the reader gets the hint. | martinus j.g. veltman, the nobel prize in physics 1999, autobiography