CHM Fellows

CHM Fellows
Name	CHM Fellows
Formation	2010s
Type	Honorary Fellowship
Headquarters	San Francisco
Location	United States
Leader title	Director

CHM Fellows is an honorary fellowship program that recognizes distinguished contributors to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of computing history. The fellowship convenes scholars, curators, engineers, collectors, archivists, and public intellectuals from a wide range of institutions and initiatives to advise museums, exhibitions, archives, and educational projects. Through collaborations with libraries, foundations, universities, and museums, the program aims to shape how computing heritage is documented and presented to the public.

Overview

The fellowship assembles experts associated with institutions such as the Computer History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, and universities like Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. Fellows often include practitioners from technology companies and laboratories such as Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, IBM, Microsoft Research, Google Research, Intel Corporation, Apple Inc., and Hewlett-Packard. The network maintains ties with cultural organizations like the American Alliance of Museums, ALA, Society of American Archivists, and international partners such as the Science Museum, London, Deutsches Museum, and Musée des Arts et Métiers.

History and Establishment

The fellowship originated in the 2010s amid growing interest in documenting milestones like the restoration of early machines such as the ENIAC, the acquisition of archives from figures linked to Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, and projects centering on artifacts connected to ENIAC's contemporaries. Founders drew on precedents from advisory bodies tied to institutions that curated collections related to John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Donald Knuth, Edsger Dijkstra, and pioneers associated with the ARPANET and Internet Engineering Task Force. Early charter members included curators, historians, and engineers who had worked on exhibits about the UNIVAC, Altair 8800, Cray Research systems, and personal computing histories linked to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Wozniak.

Selection and Eligibility

Candidates are nominated by professional organizations, museums, archives, universities, and corporations such as ACM, IEEE, Association for Computing Machinery, Computer Science Teachers Association, National Science Foundation, and philanthropic organizations including the Gates Foundation and MacArthur Foundation. Eligibility emphasizes demonstrated contributions to preserving records, hardware, software, oral histories, or scholarship tied to figures like John Backus, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Barbara Liskov, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Ivan Sutherland, and Seymour Cray. Selection committees typically include representatives from the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and major museum boards, evaluating nominees on criteria used by bodies that award honors such as the Turing Award, the IEEE Medal of Honor, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Roles and Responsibilities

Fellows advise on curatorial priorities, acquisition strategies, exhibit design, and digital preservation workflows, collaborating with teams that manage collections like those related to Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and projects preserving source code and documentation from landmark software such as UNIX, CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Mac OS, and Linux kernel. They mentor archivists working with oral-history programs focused on interviews with innovators including JCR Licklider, Nicholas Negroponte, Elizabeth Feinler, Grace Hopper protégés, and engineers from Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Fellows also assist in grant reviews for institutions seeking support from funders like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Simons Foundation, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Notable Fellows

The roster has included historians and practitioners affiliated with major projects and personalities: curators who organized exhibitions on ENIAC reconstruction, scholars who have written about Babbage and Ada Lovelace, technologists who documented work at PARC and Bell Labs, and archivists who preserved the papers of John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Donald Knuth, Edsger Dijkstra, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Barbara Liskov, Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn, Linus Torvalds, and leaders from companies such as IBM, Intel Corporation, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Google LLC, and Hewlett-Packard. Fellows have also included curators from the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History, directors from the Computer History Museum, academic authors from MIT Press and Oxford University Press, and oral historians associated with programs at Harvard University and Stanford University.

Impact and Contributions

Fellows have influenced major acquisitions, preservation projects, and exhibits that highlight milestones tied to individuals and projects like Alan Turing’s legacy, the ARPANET’s evolution into the Internet, the development of programming languages attributed to John Backus and Dennis Ritchie, and the cultural history surrounding entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Their guidance has helped institutions secure and conserve physical artifacts (e.g., early workstations, mainframes, minicomputers), documentary records (e.g., source code repositories, technical memos), and oral histories featuring figures like Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy. Through partnerships with funders, publishers, and universities, fellows have supported public-facing initiatives including traveling exhibitions, digital archives, curricula, and documentaries that bring stories of computing pioneers to audiences worldwide.

Category:Fellowships