Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
33,000
30,000
27,000
24,000
21,000
18,000
15,000
12,000
9,000
6,000
3,000
0
1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971
Figure 7.2
ACM members, 1947-1971.
made use of dormitory facilities. The papers presented were usually
technical, and the proceedings were published. The ACM conferences
never acquired the trade show atmosphere that characterized other
national meetings. The National Computer Conference, which became
almost entirely commercial, for instance, resembled a trade show much
more than an academic conference. In fact, deliberate efforts were made
to distance the ACM from the infl uence of the commercial vendors,
particularly IBM. For many years the ACM resisted publishing its own
journal, possibly because “some early ACM leaders saw the society as a
declaration of independence from IBM, and, by extension, from all com-
mercial considerations like the sale of publications and the solicitation
of advertising.”
27
Until 1953, when it began publishing the
Journal of
the ACM
, the ACM exclusively supported the National Research
Council's highly technical journal
Mathematical Tables and Other Aids
to Computation
. Even then, the primary contents of the
Journal of the
ACM
were theoretical papers, and the emphasis was on the dissemina-
tion of “information about computing machinery in the best scientifi c
