Dr. Tim Bergin

Over the next few months, ARL worked with contacts at the University of Pennsylvania (Mr. Steve Brown and Dr. Greg Farrington) and with the ACM (Dr. Bert Herzog, Dr. Dianne Martin, and Dr. Tim Bergin); fi nally, we met with Dr. Herman Goldstine himself, who had been the Army technical representative overseeing the ENIAC project 50 years earlier.
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One result of these activities, due particularly to Dr. Bergin, was that an Army history panel was added to the ACM History Track.
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In addition to the assistance of Dr. Bergin, enthusiastic support was received from Dr. William Moye (ARL Historian), Mr. Harry Reed (former BRL Division Chief), and Mr. Mike Muuss (Senior Computer Scientist at ARL).
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In no small measure, credit for these pages goes to Dr. Bergin, Dr. Moye, and Dr. Barbara Collier (ARL Technical Publishing Branch).
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Among these were Dr. Bertram Herzog, of the University of Michigan, who I think is going to be here later; Dr. Frank Friedman, who is Chairman of the Computer Science Department at Temple University; and Dr. Tim Bergin, of the American University, who is up on stage with us and whom you'll meet in just a few minutes.
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Tim, who is a historian, had already put together a history track for the ACM meeting and very kindly extended the program so that we could have our own special session devoted to the work at Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG).
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The History Track, chaired by Tim Bergin of American University, had a panel on "The Army, the National Need, and the ENIAC."
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Tim Bergin, who Dr. Deitz referred to a minute ago, provided a lot of the material and certainly provided all the little identifi cation pieces in the display case over there.
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Tim had a different array of items up at the ACM Computer Science Conference in Philadelphia. This is a very nice display of artifacts, pamphlets, and manuals on some of the early machines. Tim is a professor at American University, and he is our next speaker. .. Keynote Address: A Short History of Computing or How Did We Get to Aberdeen?

Tim Bergin:
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Thank you very much, Tim.
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This is one of the little marvels that Tim Bergin referred to earlier.
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Maurice attended the class, which Tim Bergin mentioned, in 1946.25 Out of that grew that first machine called the EDSAC, which was a successful copy, essentially, of the EDVAC.26
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Tim Bergin brought some.

This page contains Professor Tim Bergin's lectures from the class CSIS 550, History of Computing.

As Professor Tim Bergin explains, the water in our oceans is one of the oldest things on the planet, created more than 4.7 billion years ago.

Tim Bergin, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and

The issue has important articles by historians Thomas Haigh and Tim Bergin.

Tim Bergin, The American University

The purpose of government is to collect taxes, provide infrastructure like roads and highways, regulate, supply people with information and to serve as the intermediary, and you can do it all online, said Tim Bergin, a professor of computer science at American University in Washington, D.C., and a former computer specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Government should lead the charge and leverage its investment in computers, the Internet and information technology in general to make e-government work, Bergin said.

Pick Your Target

The Internet community is pitching a wide array of services, but they generally fall into one of two categories : transaction support or Web portals.

Many of the early entrants in the market have focused on electronic procurement - making it easier for government agencies to do business with their contractors.

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Bergin said the time and money the federal government has spent in developing technologies and attempting to transform itself into an e-government should yield a smaller, leaner government.

At the end of some process, do you see benefits to management and education? Is the quality better? Bergin asked.If a publications office is the same size after they dot-commed it all, and it costs money to move to the Web, should not we see some payoff?.

Answering those questions and producing that payoff is what the B2G companies and the agencies they serve will have to do.

Thomas J. "Tim" Bergin, who is director and curator of the museum in Washington, D.C., started his addiction for "stuff" - as he calls his collection - and the history and language behind computers in the '60s.

Bergin, a computer expert for the federal government in the mid-'60s, described himself showing students how to calculate the value of Manhattan Island using FORTRAN II on an IBM 1401.Two books were given to him by students, Bergin said, and "from such small events was an addiction born.

"I was hooked.If I heard about anyone contemplating retirement, I would go and introduce myself and ask if they had anything from the past that they were going to throw away.In some ways, I thought of myself as a computer conservationist.

"Since that time, I have sought and collected literally hundreds of items (probably closer to 1,000) including old books and pamphlets, mechanical calculating devices, and a wide range of artifacts of early computer systems.It is important to note that as people learned of this hobby, they would send or bring me things, and my collection of stuff grew.
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After leaving the federal government in 1982, Bergin started teaching at American University.In the process of explaining the background on the IBM 1401, and knowing its scarcity, he told students he would like to have the front panel from one before he died.He later found one leaning on his office door furnished by a student.

"From this point on," Bergin said, "I became more aggressive in my searching and actively talked to my old colleagues at the VA and other government agencies trying to find materials on the early days of computing."

He scrounged through antique shops, too.His office was one of those where a visitor would remark, "Gee, this looks like a museum in here."Departments were merged and Bergin began teaching courses at the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at American University.

Road to becoming a curatorAt this point, "two separate incidents converged to result in the Computing History Museum, Bergin said.The 50th anniversary of computing was to be celebrated in Philadelphia 1995 by the Association for Computing Machinery(ACM).That was where the ENIAC (Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer) was built in Philadelphia from 1943-46.Bergin was asked to commemorate the event and supplied part of the display, "sharing my collection, and my (by now) hobby of collecting computer artifacts with some of the top people in the computing field."

In the next year, the display was shown six times at professional conferences, including in the Bender Library at American University."Without knowing it," Bergin said, "I had really become a curator."

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The removal of two ATM machines resulted in some space in the foyer and Bergin asked to build a museum there.It was granted - along with the University architect to help.

'Serendipitous' eventsSeveral of what Bergin calls "serendipitous" events happened later.A student in his computer history class said the Graduate Student Association had money to contribute.The owner of a local glass shop built custom-designed, museum-quality display cases for the museum.
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The museum, Bergin says, "has taken the kindness of more than fifty generous donors to populate its displays and shelves, and the boundless energy and enthusiasm of 20 or more students over the past five years - to make it a reality.For all of their efforts, I am most grateful."

Web site: American University Computing History Museum