Volume 14, No. 1
November 2001
New SHOT International Scholar
In Search of the First Personal Computer
What Mercurians are Reading and Writing
That's As High As It Will Ever Get: Getting Into Orbit
Just to show that historians are not entirely uninterested in money, this year’s annual meeting in San José focused on how to get some of it. Bruce Seely, Program Director of Science and Technology Studies at the National Science Foundation, graciously joined the Mercurians’ breakfast meeting and informed us of opportunities, including some new ones, for research support. Options range widely, so take a look at the encouraging statement he prepared for Antenna.
Antenna’s discussion of “firsts” bears provocative fruit as it enters its third year. Susan B. Barnes brings new insights to the questions of how historians might best consider who-did-what-first by explicating an important and timely case, that of the personal computer. In her article, she shows that putting together a chronology is the least of the historians’ problems when taking on such a complex system.
As you can see from the back cover, we now lack a News and Museum Editor. So you have two choices: either send the editors some news about members, other folks engaged in related pursuits, museum exhibits, and other pertinent items of note, or volunteer for this important position. Or both....
A new column, “What Are Mercurians Reading and Writing?” will appear in upcoming issues of Antenna. See the story for the plans and how you can contribute.
Every once in a while, someone contacts us asking about an article that appeared in these pages. Making up a listing of articles and essays promised to speed up providing answers. Once that was done, however, we thought that publishing the list might be useful all around, so here it is in this issue. Now you can visual the grand sweep of it all right here.
As always, we most wholeheartedly thank Pam Stephan for her hard work at building the <mercurians.org> website and maintaining it. Contact her at <pstephan@centurytel.net> with suggestions and comments. Or send ideas to Pam Laird.
Business matters: If you received a remittance envelope with this mailing, your subscription and membership end with this issue. Please see this page for renewal information. Thank you for responding . Thanks to all of you for your interest and support. And thanks, again, to SHOT and the University of Colorado Denver for their continuing support.