‑#Driver file for complete Anecdotes list
              , and
Anecdotes in the Annals of the History of Computing
Initially constructed by David Walden, September 2013, updated quarterly
(If you see errors in the list, please let me know: dave@walden-family.com).

The following list is organized by volume and issue. The goal of this list is to be a complete list in one place of the anecdotes published in the Anecdotes Department of the Annals, along with links to the anecdotes' issues' web pages at computer.out/annals. This perhaps will be useful for historians of computing. The following list also notes department editors at the point when their tenure started. (Anecdotes have also been told in the Annals as part of feature-length articles and in other departments, and those are not included.)

Having the full list of anecdotes in the Anecdotes Department in one place also makes clear the variety of topics covered in the Anecdotes Departent over the history of the Annals. I hope this variety reminds journal readers and others that they too may have anecdotes to offer.

I also have provided a brief note on writing an anecdote.

A couple of department statistics are included near the end of this web page.

Volume 1 (1979)
Calvin C. Gotlieb is founding department editor
1‑1 FORTRAN Comes to Westinghouse-Bettis, 1957
              Herb Bright
1‑2 Some Memories of EDSAC I: 1950-1952
              Sandy Douglas
Volume 2 (1980)
2‑2 Napier and Babbage
              Harry Nagler
2‑3 How Not To Conserve Memory Space (or What Elegance Is Not)
              David W. Thompson
2‑4 Recollections of the Early Days of Machine Tabulating
              Gary C. Kesler
Volume 3 (1981)
Henry S. Tropp takes over as department editor
3‑1 Origin of the Word Byte
              Werner Buchholz
3‑2 The Machine that Carried IBM into the Electronics Business
              Geoffrey D. Austrian
3‑3 Stories from the HOPL Banquet
              C.L. Baker, Grace Hopper, and anonymous
3‑4 An Impossible Program
              Christopher Strachey
3‑4 Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace
              Velma R. Huskey and Harry D. Huskey
Volume 4 (1982)
4‑1 The Adventures of a Blunder
              R.A. Brooker, S. Gill, and D.J. Wheeler
4‑1 Reminiscences of Los Alamos
              Eric A. Weiss
4‑1 Los Alamos from Below
              Richard P. Feynman
4‑1 Tales of Los Alamos
              Bernice Brode
4‑3 Notes from the Mathematical Centre
              W.L. van der Poel and Maurice V. Wilkes
4‑3 First SHARE 709 Committee Meeting
              C.L. Baker
4‑4 Alexander Craig Aitkin
              Garry J. Tee
4‑4 Leslie John Comrie
              Henry S. Tropp
4‑4 MAD Compiler
              Bernard A. Galler
Volume 5 (1983)
5‑1 Algorithmic Perfection
              Heinz Zemanek
5‑4 L.J. Comrie
              Henry S. Tropp
Volume 6 (1984)
6‑1 FORTRAN Anecdotes
              Henry S. Tropp
6‑2 Origin of the Word Bit
              Robert Price and Henry S. Tropp
6‑2 The Soviets and the ENIAC
              John Grist Brainerd
6‑3 The End of the ABC
              Robert M. Stewart
6‑4 Whence the “Bug”?
              Henry S. Tropp
Volume 7 (1985)
7‑1 Who Was the Mysterious Countess?
              Velma R. Huskey
7‑2 Jonathan Swift's Computing Invention
              Eric A. Weiss
7‑3 I/O in the IBM 709 Computer
              Bernard A. Galler
7‑3 A 1940 Word Processor
              P.M. Murphy
7‑4 Islamic Calendar
              Hans-Joachim Albinus
7‑4 Howard Aiken
              Isaac L. Auerbach
Volume 8 (1986)
8‑2 Computing Capacity
              Walter Carlson
8‑4 Britain's Real-Time Club
              Nancy Foy
8‑4 Recollections about IFIP People
              Leon Lukaszewicz
Volume 9 (1987)
9‑2 Babbage's Expectations for the Difference Engine
              Maurice V. Wilkes
9‑2 James Wilkinson (1919-1986)
              various
The third issue of 1987 was listed as issue 3/4
9‑3 Introduction (to the following five notes relating to MADDIDA)
              Henry S. Tropp
9‑3 The MADDIDA
              Michael R. Williams
9‑3 Personal Recollections
              Isaac Auerbach
9‑3 1982 Claude E. Shannon Lecture: Application Transforms to Coding and Related Topics
              Irving S. Reed
9‑3 The von Neumann Letter
              John von Neumann
9‑3 Interview with Irving S. Reed
              Bobbi Mapstone
Volume 10 (1988)
James E. Tomayko takes over as department editor
10‑1 Introduction (to the following)
              Bruce H. Bruemmer
10‑1 General Electric Enters the Computer Business
              George Snively
10‑2 Alan Turing in the Home Guard
              Peter Hilton
10‑2 Overcoming Murphy's Law
              Richard Louis Weiss
10‑2 Babbage and the Scheutz Machine at Dudley Observatory
              Alfred Van Sinderen
10‑3 Fast Predictors: Computers and the U.S. Presidential Elections (Introduction)
              James Tomakyo
10‑3 UNIVAC on Election Night
              A.F. Draper
10‑3 IBM Computers and the Election of 1960 (excerpts from an IBM report)
              IBM
10‑4 Example anecdotes from the first 10 volumes
              Various
Volume 11 (1989)
11‑1 The Windmill Computer—An Eyewitness Report of the Scheutz Difference Engine
              Ralf Bülow
11‑1 In Von Braun Country
              Herbert R.J. Grosch
11‑1 Origins of Terms
              John D. Elson
11‑2 Twenty Year Retrospective: The NATO Software Engineering Conferences
              Alan Perlis
11‑2 Thoughts on Software Engineering
              Bernard A. Galler
11‑2 My Thoughts on Software Engineering in the Late 1960s
              David Gries
11‑2 The NATO Conferences from the Perspective of an Active Software Engineer
              Doug Ross
11‑2 Remembrances of a Graduate Student
              Mary Shaw
11‑3 A Critical incident
              Lawrence W. Langley
11‑3 The first Port of UNIX
              Juris Reinfelds
11‑4 The Case Against Automatic Programming
              John A. N. Lee
Volume 12 (1990)
12‑1 Early Computer User Groups (an introduction to the following previously unpublished document from 1960)
              Bruce H. Bruemmer
12‑1 Computer User Groups, 1960
              Herbert S. Bright
12‑2 More on General Electric's Start in the Computer Business (an introduction to the following interview)
              James Tomayko
12‑2 Dr. Robert Johnson Interview (a February 7 1961 interview)
              Interviewer's name lost
12‑3 For the Record: Pioneering Days in British Computing
              A.S. Douglas
12‑4 The Evolution of Software Design Ideas
              David J. Koepke
Volume 13 (1991)
13‑1 Frontiers of Computing: A Tribute to Edsger Dijkstra on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday
              J.A.N. Lee
13‑1 The “Project that Failed” that Succeeded
              Robert L. Glass
13‑3 The Tape Story Tapestry: Historical Research with Inaccessible Digital Information Technologies
              Shane Greenstein
13‑4 What is This, And, and That?
              Roy R. Weil
13‑4 The First Bug—Discussion
              John H. Palmer
13‑4 Thomas J. Watson Sr. and the Perfect Computer
              Harry Polachek
Volume 14 (1992)
14‑1 The Computer—A Philatelic Collection
              Menachem Lador
14‑2 LEO, the Pride of Lyons (reprinted from British Journal of Administrative Management, Dec. 1990)
              Peter Bird
14‑3 UNIVAC Trounces Its Own Creator
              Harry Polachek
14‑3 HAL 9000 (1992?-2001)
              Eric A. Weiss
14‑3 Favorite Hack
              Richard L. Wexelblat
Volume 15 (1993)
15‑1 Memories of Alan Turing
              Robin W. Addie
15‑2 Atanasoff at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory
              Calvin N. Mooers
15‑3 A Very Early Expert System
              Herbert A. Simon
15‑3 Unlocking Enigma's Secrets
              Vicki Moeser
15‑4 Solidac: An Early Minicomputer for Teaching Purposes
              Paul A.V. Thomas
Volume 16 (1994)
16‑2 The Babbage River
              Keith Smillie
16‑2 The Use of “Bug” in Computing
              I. Bernard Cohen
16‑3 Electronic Computer for Home Operation (ECHO): The First Home Computer
              Jay Sutherland
Volume 17 (1995)
17‑1 The Role of Computers in Education (discussion of a 1955 letter by the founder of Babson College)
              Jerome Kanter
17‑1 Babbage and Clements
              Paul Ceruzzi
17‑2 System 360 Floating-Point Problems
              Robert Rosin and Len Harding
17‑3 “Offense Calculator”
              Eric A. Weiss
17‑3 Remembering J. Pres Eckert
              Henry S. Tropp
Volume 18 (1996)
18‑1 The Life and Times of the Digital Computers Association (DCA)
              Walt Carlson
18‑3 Charles Babbage and the Anglo-American Copyright Dispute
              Brian Randell
18‑3 The Undersung Hero of Computing: The IBM 1400 Series
              Rudolph E. Hirsch
Volume 19 (1997)
19‑1 UNIVAC I, Serial 1—in duPont
              Walter M. Carlson
19‑1 Herman Hollerith's Historic Hilltop Home
              Eric A. Weiss
19‑2 The Controversial Replica of Leonardo de Vinci's Adding Machine
              E. Kaplan
19‑2 More on the UNIVAC I at Du Pont
              Walter M. Carlson
19‑2 Memories of the SWAC
              David Rutland
19‑4 A Tale of Assembly
              Neville Holmes
19‑4 The Katapayadi formula and the modern hashing technique
              A.V. Raman
19‑4 A Nano-Abacus
              IBM
Volume 20 (1998)
20‑1 Memories of the NATO
              Software Engineering Conferences
20‑1 Appendix: Masterpiece Engineering
              T.H. Simpson
20‑2 Experiences With Computer Graphics in the United Kingdom in the 1970s
              Brian Wyvill
20‑2 The ENIAC Patent
              Charles E. McTiernan
Volume 21 (1999)
21‑1 Nineteenth-Century Observatories and Chorus of Computers
              David Alan Grier
21‑1 A Computing Factory
              Michael R. Williams
21‑2 Fortran
              Edward G. Nilges
21‑4 Overcoming Pilot-Induced Oscillations in the Space Shuttle
              James E. Tomayko
21‑4 Case 5,656: L.J. Comrie and the Origins of the Scientific Computing Service Ltd.
              Mary Croarken
Volume 22 (2000)
22‑1 Ida Rhodes and the dreams of a human computer
              David Alan Grier
22‑2 The Origins of JSP and JSD: A Personal Recollection
              Michael Jackson
22‑2 TRADIC
              Frank S. Preston
22‑2 Lovelace-Babbage Letters Discovered in Newcastle
              Christopher Goulding
22‑4 Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, 1815-1852: What was her family name?
              J.A.N. Lee
22‑4 The Early Magnetic Drums
              Andrew D. Booth
Volume 23 (2001)
23‑1 Software design knowledge and Vincenti's categories of engineering knowledge
              Guy Tremblay
23‑2 The First Breach of Computer Security?
              David Alan Grier
23‑3 Origin of Virtual Machines and Other Virtualities
              Peter J. Denning
Volume 24 (2002)
Anne Fitzpatrick takes over as department editor
24‑1 Founding Atlantic Software
              Walter Brown
24‑1 The travails of Software Resources
              Robert V. Head
24‑1 Founding the ICP Directories
              Lawrence Welke
24‑2 A well-intentioned query and the Halloween Problem
              Philip L. Frana
24‑2 A software lineage
              Laurie Robertson
24‑2 The MESM and the monastery
              Anne Fitzpatrick and Boris N. Malinovsky
24‑3 Remembering the LFK Network
              Nils J. Liaaen and David C. Walden
24‑4 Recollections of the beginning of the time-sharing industry
              Richard L. Crandall
24‑4 CCITT meeting recommendations
              Robert Weissman
24‑4 Remembering some computers and languages
              Keith Smillie
Volume 25 (2003)
25‑1 Reminiscences of superconductive associative memory research in the former Soviet Union
              Simon Berkovich
25‑1 Vannevar Bush's network analyzer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
              Frank Preston
25‑1 Computers and urban security
              Jennifer S. Light
25‑1 Origin of the Term Minicomputer (only at history.computer.org/annals/extras/anec25-1.html)
              Rolf Sinclair
25‑2 Developing TELNET's Negotiated Options
              Bernard Cosell and David Walden
25‑3 On the origins of :-)
              David Alan Grier
25‑4 How did you first get into computing? (asked of 8 well known women)
              Janet Abbate
25‑4 A 1965 era spreadsheet
              Frank S. Preston
Volume 26 (2004)
26‑1 The birth of an era
              Joe E. Rogers
26‑1 Calvin Mooers—How he came to be known as the “click” man
              Bob Bemer
Laurie Robertson takes over as department editor
26‑2 Arlington Hall Station: The US Army's World War II Cryptoanalytic Center
              Laurie Robertson
26‑3 Relocation Bits
              Bernard A. Galler
26‑4 Origin of the Virtual Memory Concept
              Eike Jeseen
26‑4 Translating Computer and Calculator in common European languages
              Mario Aloisio
Volume 27 (2005)
27‑1 Early Data Reduction on the IBM Card Programmed Calculator
              Robert L. Patrick
27‑1 On the word Software
              Herbert Kanner
27‑2 Micro to Mainframe
              Stanley Mazor
27‑3 Googling History
              Laurie Robertson
27‑4 Reflections on the Difference Engine
              Andrew D. Booth
27‑4 The Founders of the ACM
              Eric A. Weiss
Volume 28 (2006)
28‑1 Getting Started in Consulting
              Robert Patrick
28‑2 My Father and the Second Generation of Computer Pioneers
              Phillip A. Laplante Jr.
28‑2 8 Bits of Irony
              Stanley Mazor
28‑3 Hardware Design in the Founding of Computer Science at CMU
              Jesse T. Quatse
28‑4 Taking Newspapers from Hot Lead into Electronic Age
              Mike Marcus and George Trimble
Volume 29 (2007)
29‑1 Computer Recollections: Events, Humor, and Happenings
              Walter F. Bauer
29‑2 Intel 8080 CPU Chip Development
              Stanley Mazor
Anne Fitzpatrick returns as department editor
29‑3 Design of an Early Minicomputer
              Herbert Freeman
29‑4 ENIAC as a Stored-Program Computer: A New Look at the Old Records
              Crispin Rope
Volume 30 (2008)
30‑1 Fairchild Symbol Computer
              Stanley Mazor
30‑2 The Engineer's Tale: The Founding of the Software Publishing Corporation
              John Page
David Walden takes over as department editor
30‑3 The Genesis of the Tenet 210: An Early Time-Sharing System
              Chuck Runge
30‑4 The Origin of the Winter Simulation Conferences
              Julian Reitman
Volume 31 (2009)
31‑1 The Birth of Link-State Routing
              John McQuillan
31‑2 Prototype Fragments from Babbage's First Difference Engine
              Denis Roegel
31‑3 Magnovox and Intel: An Odyssey
              Stanley Mazor and Peter Salmon
31‑3 The Early Days of the ARPANET
              Peter Kirstein
31‑4 The Humble Beginnings of TECO
              Dan Murphy
Volume 32 (2010)
32‑1 The Intel 8086
              Stanley Mazor
32‑2 Introduction
              David Walden
32‑2 Some Notes on Computing in Canada in the 1950s
              Keith Smillie
32‑2 Remembering the Digital Computer Association
              Robert L. Patrick
32‑3 The Network Information Center and Its Archives
              Elizabeth Feinler
32‑4 RAID: A Personal Recollection of How Storage Became a System
              Randy Katz
Volume 33 (2011)
33‑1 INWG and the Conception of the Internet—an eyewitness account
              Alex McKenzie
33‑2 The book Computer Structures: 40 years after-thoughts
              Gordon Bell and Dan Siewiorek
33‑3 Host Tables, Top Level Domain Names, and the Origin of Dot Com
              Elizabeth Feinler
33‑4 Editor's Note (on classic books in computing history)
              David Walden
33‑4 Computer and Thought, the back story
              Julian Feldman
33‑4 Online shopping in the 1980s
              Michael Aldrich
Volume 34 (2012)
34‑1 CTSS email and text messaging, 1965-1973
              Tom Van Vleck
Craig Partridge takes over as department editor
34‑2 The LOCOMAT Project: Recomputing Mathematical and Astronomical Tables
              Denis Roegel
34‑3 An Early Statistical Calculation
              Keith Smillie
34‑4 Early History of SQL
              Donald D. Chamberlin
Volume 35 (2013)
35‑2 SQL/DS: IBM's First RDBMS
              Hershel Harris and Bert Nicol
35‑2 The SQL Standard: How It Happened
              Donald R. Deutsch
David Walden returns as department editor
35‑3 Computer-Generated PhD Dissertations: An Early Experience
              Dennis Frailey
35‑4 Burroughs Algol at Stanford University, 1960-1963
              Robert Braden
Volume 36 (2014)
36‑1 War Stories of an IBM Salesman, 1974-1981
              James Cortada
36‑1 Times Have Changed
              Robert Patrick
36‑2 Early Token Ring Work at MIT
              J. Noel Chiappa
36‑3 What is a Computer? An Answer from the Past
              Tim Bergin
36‑4 My Corner of the Time-Sharing Innovation World
              Bo Lewendal
Volume 37 (2015)
37‑1 TENEX and TOPS-20
              Dan Murphy
37‑2 Doing History in the Olden Days, 1970s–1990s
              James Cortada
37‑3 Machines, Languages, and Computation at MIT
              Peter J. Denning and Jack B. Dennis
37‑3 The Story of SimH
              Bob Supnik
37‑4 A Mechanical Calculator for Arithmetic Sequences (1844–1852), Part 1
              Denis Roegel
Volume 38 (2016)
38‑1 A Mechanical Calculator for Arithmetic Sequences (1844–1852), Part 2, Working Details
              Denis Roegel
38‑2 Retrospective Computing and Consumer-Led Development
              Adam P. Spring
38‑3 Notes on the History of Fork and Join
              Linus Nyman and Mikael Laakso
38‑4 Before Torchi and Schwilgué, There Was White
              Denis Roegel
Volume 39 (2017)
39‑1 Early History of Computing in Switzerland: Discovery of Rare Devices, Unknown Documents, and Scarcely Known Facts
              Herbert Bruderer
39‑2 In Search of the Original Fortran Compiler
              Paul McJones
39‑3 Carries Stripped to the Bone: Episodes in the History of Coaxial Modular Digital Counters
              Denis Roegel
39‑4 The LISP 2 Project
              Paul McJones
Volume 40 (2018)
40‑1 The First Public Discussion of the Secret Colossus Project
              Michael R. Williams
40‑2 A Slice of Norway's Computing History
              Ingvar Lundh
40‑3 How Atex Helped an Industry Change the World
              Douglas Drane
40‑3 More about Atex
              Jonathan Seybold
40‑4 Studying IBM’s History When You Are Part of It
              James Cortada
40‑4 Publishing a Computer Graphics Book with Prototype Desktop Publishing Tools
              Robert F. Sproull
Volume 41 (2019)
41‑1 Flowcharting Templates
              Peggy Aldrich Kidwell
41‑1 A Novel Program for Philosophers to Study Computer Science
              David Hemmendinger
41‑2 Learning to Network
              Stephen Crocker
41‑2 Origins of the Domain Name System
              Oscar M. Bonastre and Andreu Veà
41‑3 Paul Brainerd, Aldus Corporation and the Desktop Publishing Revolution
              Suzanne Crocker
41‑4 Reflecting Back on the Lighthill Affair
              Maarten van Emden
41‑4 Software Recovery and Beyond: The MCM/70 Case
              Zbigniew Stachniak
Volume 42 (2020)
42‑1 Interleaf, Inc.—1981 to 2000
              Mark Dionne and David Walden
42‑2 Queens of Code (women at NSA)
              Eileen Buckholtz
42‑2 Learning from Prototypes
              Zbigniew Stachniak
42‑3 Preserving the History of the Software Industry
              Luanne Johnson
42‑3 In Search of Software History
              Burton Grad
42‑3 Finding Software Industry History
              Burton Grad
42‑4 The Origin of the “MIT License”
              Jerome H. Saltzer
Volume 43 (2021)
43‑1 On the Origin of Kerberos
              Jerome H. Saltzer
Alexander Magoun takes over as department editor
43‑2 Preserving the Past by Industry Participants
              James W. Cortada
43‑3 Linux and Supercomputing: How My Passion for Building COTS Systems Led to an HPC Revolution
              David A. Bader
43‑4 Sterling Software: An $8 Billion Success Story in the 1980s and 1990s
              Burton Grad
Volume 44 (2022)
44‑1 The History of Franz and Lisp
              Fritz Kunze, Lauren Kunze
44‑2 Working and Living at Bletchley Park
              Alexander B. Magoun
44‑3 “Well Paid for a Woman”: Gloria Hardman's 50-Year Career in Computing
              Philip Nel
44‑4 Challenges of Large-Scale Data Processing in the 1990s: The IPUMS Experience
              Diana L. Magnuson, Steven Ruggles
Volume 45 (2023)
45‑1 Building a Computer at the University of Padua, 1958-1961
               Maristella Agosti, Alberto Cammozzo, Francesco Contin, Silvio Hénin

Total anecdotes = 237     average of 5.4 per year


[see: a-work/ieeehc/annals/anecdotes/README.txt]