Wikipedia:WikiProject Computing/Early computers task force

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Some Wikipedians have formed a task force to better organize information in articles related to early computers (for which purpose early computers are loosely described as anything before those using integrated circuits). This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this task force will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list there.

Scope

This task force is a place to co-ordinate work on the numerous Wikipedia pages about early computers.

Participants

Jnc|Talk
User:Matt Crypto — I'm interested in early cryptanalytic hardware, including computers/proto-computers like the Colossus and the Bombes.
pavlosh|Talk
Walksonwalls|Talk
Bubba73|Talk - inactive, though. I did quite a bit on early computers several months ago, but none lately.
Spyza|Talk
RTC|Talk
It's me, User:MiKE100malloy; wanna drop me a line at my Talk page? I like the old computers, and hope to contribute more to the project.
-- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
--mikeu ^talk 12:00, 27 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
User:W Nowicki|Talk
Stutya|Talk
--agr (talk) 19:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC) Is this still active?[reply]
Bduke (talk) I first started computing on a very early computer, coding in Mercury Autocode, in 1960, so I am happy to work in this project, particularity if it becomes more active.

Goals

We are starting with a very limited list of goals; however, free free to add more (after discussion on the Talk: page, of course).

To standardize classification of early computers into several different Categories. See /Generations for a draft article on the stages of early computer development.

Infoboxes

{{User Early computers task force}}

This user is a member of the Early computers task force.

Project Articles

{{WikiProject Computing|class=|importance=|early-comp=yes|early-comp-importance=}}

Early computers articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
Quality	Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	Other	???	Total
FA	2							2
GA							1	1
B	2	10	7	2			3	24
C	4	45	35	14			14	112
Start	3	28	46	38			47	162
Stub		2	10	18			39	69
List		1	1					2
Category					145	1		146
Project					1			1
Redirect			2		9			11
Template					1			1
Assessed	11	86	101	72	156	1	104	531
Unassessed							20	20
Total	11	86	101	72	156	1	124	551
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 1,746			Ω = 4.72

Information sources

Books

The list got rather long, and has been moved to /Books.

External links

The single most important source is probably the Annals of the History of Computing series; there is an online index of the issues here, but the articles themselves are only free to IEEE members, etc.

The Charles Babbage Institute has a massive collection of oral histories of computer pioneers online; the complete list is rather lengthy.

The University of Manchester has a great web site Birth of the Modern Computer, which includes a good links page.

The late (and much missed) Mike Muuss collected a large number of original documents relating to early computer work in the US, at History of Computing Information

Some info relating to early computer work in the USSR (there used to be such country :-) with focus to Ukraine.

List of books about Soviet computers [1] on the Kiev Museum server.