SIA 2008 A Big Success

Thanks to some great help from volunteers, excellent vendors and enthusiastic attendees, over 130 industrial archeologists from all over the US and Canada, and one intrepid person from Australia, made SIA 2008 a success.  If I could, I'd personally thank every one of you!  See you in Chattanooga and Pittsburgh!

Conference Documents Available On-line

All of the formal documents for SIA 2008 are now available on-line.  There will be supplemental material and last minute errata distributed at registration.  You can even take virtual tours of some of the planned tours via the Google Maps Street View feature.  Check out Sunol Street in San José from The Alameda to Auzerais, and the former Del Monte Plant #3, where we'll go on the Cannery Life tour.

Difference Engine #2 Arrives!

NEW 5/6/08: The Computer History Museum's Babbage web pages are up in anticipation of the public opening of the Difference Engine exhibit on May 10, 2008. 

NEW 5/2/08: See Dr. Doron Swade, Director of the Difference Engine Project in a new Wired video talking about the Engine and its creator, Charles Babbage.

Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #2 has arrived at the Computer History Museum, site of the Conference Banquet on Saturday, May 31.  Babbage designed the Engine in 1847-49, but the plans remained unimplemented until 1985 when researchers at the Science Museum, London decided to make one to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Babbage's birth in 1991. This is "Serial Number: 2", a second machine commissioned by Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO and Group VP.  The formal public opening is May 10. Under current plans, the machine will be on public display for only a year.

This is an absolutely unique exercise in Industrial Archeology. Babbage left behind only 20 pages of drawings, and no details on materials, tolerances, etc.  Researchers constructing the machine deliberately maintained tolerances that could have been achieved in Babbage's time, dispelling the commonly held belief that Babbage could not have realized his design.

Here's Wired's coverage of the arrival.

For anyone interested in the history of technology, Victorian engineering, or mechanical computation, a visit to this remarkable machine is a must!

At a Glance

The 2008 Society for Industrial Archeology National Conference is co-sponsored by:

Samuel Knight Chapter of the SIA

History San José

Computer History Museum

San José State University, Department of Anthropology

and others

Although centered in San José, the conference tours will take participants to sites of interest all over the greater Bay Area. Click for a map of of conference venues and destinations.

The planning team has selected The Sainte Claire as the conference hotel. This listed in the National Register of Historic Places and a member of the Historic Hotels of America program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the hotel offers a full compliment of contemporary amenities.

The current plans for tours are here.   This information is a richer version of the Conference brochure which was mailed to SIA members  in mid-March.  The web site will be kept up to date with the latest information.  Change is the Constant also applies to the tours,  things may change, or we may even be reluctantly forced to cancel a tour all together.

San José is the 10th largest city in the US, and the largest in the Bay Area. Late May weather should be exceptionally pleasant, highs in the 70s, lows in the 50s, with low humidity and virtually no chance of rain. For many years San José has been the safest large city in the U.S.

When	What
Thursday, May 29, 2008	Registration Opens (late morning)
Thursday, May 29, 2008	Early-Bird Tours
Thursday, May 29, 2008	Opening Reception (early evening)
Friday, May 30, 2008	Tours, Birds of a Feather Session (evening), Board Meeting
Saturday, May 31, 2008	Paper Sessions, Annual General Membership Meeting, Banquet
Sunday, June 1, 2008	Stay-Over Tours

Contacts

Share Your Conference Experience

We want to encourage you to share YOUR conference experience by using the Flickr picture sharing site and tagging your conference  images with "sia2008sjc" (other variations were already taken) which is also a Flickr group name.  Flickr supports a forum for the group if you're more a prose person. You may also want to look at the Industrial Archeology group there, and to tag your images also with "industrial archeology".  Flickr is free, but you do need to register.  We have been using the del.icio.us bookmark sharing site for relevant web pages, also using the tag "sia2008".  Not all of these sites will actually be part of the Conference, but they have some useful information.