- Doron Swade
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Charles Babbage's Difference Engine in the Science Museum (London), built on a project led by Doron Swade.
Doron Swade MBE is a museum curator and author, specialising in the history of computing. He is especially known for his work on the computer pioneer Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine.[1]
Swade was originally from South Africa. He has studied electronics engineering, history, machine intelligence and philosophy of science, physics at a number of universities including the University of Cape Town, University of Cambridge, and University College London (UCL).[2] He holds a BSc in physics and electronics engineering, an MSc in control engineering, and a PhD in the history of computing from UCL.
He has been a curator at the Science Museum in London, England,[3][4] and the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, California, USA.[2] At the Science Museum, he curated the computing and electronics collections and rose to be Assistant Director and Head of Collections. His major project at the museum was the organization of a project to reconstruct Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, in collaboration with Dr Allan Bromley, who studied Babbage's original drawings at the Science Museum.
In 1989, Swade was a co-founder of the Computer Conservation Society, a specialist group of the British Computer Society (BCS), with regular meetings at the Science Museum. He is a Fellow of the BCS and a Chartered Engineer.
Swade is a Visiting Professor in the History of Computing at the University of Portsmouth, UK.[5] He is also an Honorary Research Fellow in Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London.[2]
He appeared in the In Our Time program on Ada Lovelace, a collaborator with Charles Babbage, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2008.[5]
Swade was awarded an MBE for services to the history of computing in the UK New Year Honours 2009 list.[6]
Books
Swade has written the following books:[7][8]
- The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age, 1991. BBC Books, 1993. With Jon Palfreman. ISBN 978-0563369929.
- Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines, Science Museum, London, 1998. ISBN 978-0901805454.
- The Cogwheel Brain, Abacus, 2001. ISBN 978-0349112398.
- The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, Penguin Putnam, 2001. ISBN 978-0670910205. Penguin Books, 2002. ISBN 978-0142001448.
References
- ^ Doron Swade, Computing History, UK.
- ^ a b c Doron Swade, Computer History Museum, California, USA.
- ^ Doron Swade and the Phillip's Economic Computer, 1990s, Science Museum, London, UK.
- ^ Doron Swade, 'Two Cultures: Computer Art and the Science Museum', chapter 16, pages 203–218. In Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, Nicholas Lambert, and Catherine Mason (editors), White Heat Cold Logic. The MIT Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-262-02653-6.
- ^ a b Ada Lovelace, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 6 March 2008.
- ^ Kingston computer historian, nurse and volunteer get New Year honours, Your Local Guardian, UK, 31 December 2008.
- ^ Doron Swade: Bibliography, Amazon.com.
- ^ Doron Swade, LibraryThing.
External links
Categories:- Living people
- University of Cape Town alumni
- Alumni of University College London
- Academics of the University of Portsmouth
- Academics of Royal Holloway, University of London
- People associated with the Science Museum
- British curators
- American curators
- Historians of science
- Historians of technology
- South African historians
- Fellows of the British Computer Society
- Members of the Order of the British Empire
- Alumni of the University of Cambridge
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