David K. Allison
David Allison is Chairman of the Division of Information Technology and Communications at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The staff of the division manages collections and exhibitions in the areas of communications, computing, mathematics, photography, printing, graphic arts, numismatics, and electricity. David helped create the Powering a Generation project and remains interested in the history of electrical power, although his principal specialty is history of computing.
David has a strong interest in exhibitions, and has served as a lead curator for: Information Age: People, Information and Technology; Behind the Lines: The Universal Product Code at 25; Digilab: a Digital Imaging Laboratory; Deep Blue; September 11, 2001: Bearing Witness to History and The Price of Freedom: Americans at War. He is currently working on plans for a major exhibition on the history of business in America tentatively titled American Enterprise.
His publications include: "Preserving Software in History Museums: A Material
Culture Approach," Ulf Hashagen, et. al., eds., History of Computing:
Software Issues (Berlin: Springer, 2002); "Universal Product Code in
Perspective: Context for a Revolution," in Alan L. Haberman, ed. Twenty-Five
Years behind Bars, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); "The
ENIAC," in Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society 63 (December
1999); "Archives of Data Processing: The National Museum of American History"
in Archives of Data Processing History (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990);
and New Eye for the Navy: The Origin of Radar at the Naval Research Laboratory
(Washington: GPO, 1981).