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ACM History

Introduction

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery http://www.acm.org, is an educational and scientific society uniting the world's computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking. For more information, see www.acm.org.

Origins

The Association for Computing Machinery was founded as the Eastern Association for Computing Machinery at a meeting at Columbia University in New York on September 15, 1947. Its creation was the logical outgrowth of increasing interest in computers as evidenced by several events, including a January 1947 symposium at Harvard University on large-scale digital calculating machinery; the six-meeting series in 1946-47 on digital and analog computing machinery conducted by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers; and the six-meeting series in March and April 1947, on electronic computing machinery conducted by the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In January 1948, the word "Eastern" was dropped from the name of the Association. In September 1949, a constitution was instituted by membership approval.

Scope

The original notice for the September 15, 1947, organization meeting stated in part:

The purpose of this organization would be to advance the science, development, construction, and application of the new machinery for computing, reasoning, and other handling of information.

The first and subsequent constitutions for the Association have elaborated on this statement, although the essential content remains. The present constitution states:

The Association is an international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the art, science, engineering, and application of information technology, serving both professional and public interests by fostering the open interchange of information and by promoting the highest professional and ethical standards.

Membership

ACM membership is drawn from all sectors of the computing sciences and their applications, from the design and construction of computers to the development of appropriate programming theory and languages and the utilization of computers in scientific investigation, industrial control, management data processing, and the humanities.

Originally, membership in ACM was open to all interested in the purposes of the Association. In 1966, ACM adopted grades of membership, which currently include " Professional Member" and "Student Member." Eligibility for these grades is defined as follows:

Professional Members are those who subscribe to the purposes of the Association and satisfy one of the following qualifications: 1. Bachelor's Degree; 2. Equivalent level of education; or 3. Two years full-time employment in the IT field. Student Members are those who subscribe to the purposes of the Association.

Institutional memberships for companies and universities were introduced in 1960. As of 2006, some 2,000 universities and companies had become institutional, consortia, or, corporate members. Professional Membership is 62,000, and Student Membership totals 20,000, for a total of more than 84,000 members.

Organization

ACM is governed by a Council consisting of 16 members and is the highest governing authority in ACM. Council is composed of the president, vice president, secretary/treasurer, the immediate past president, the Special Interest Group Governing Board (SGB) chair, three SGB council representatives, the publications board chair, and seven members-at-large. The president, vice president, and secretary/treasurer are elected to two-year terms by the members; the chair of the Publications Board is elected to a three-year term by the Council; and members-at-large are elected to two-year terms by members. The Council meets two times per year and the Executive Committee meets as necessary.

The headquarters office houses a staff of approximately 75 persons under the supervision of the chief executive officer (CEO). The staff performs necessary organization functions (membership, accounting, subscription fulfillment, etc.); coordinates and supports the activities of ACM chapters and committees; provides membership services (online books and courses); acts as a liaison for meetings sponsored by the Association; and produces ACM periodicals. It serves as an information center for members, news media, and the general public on a diversity of subjects in the general area of computers and their applications.

Four boards, comprising numerous volunteer committees and subgroups, work together with the headquarters staff to manage ACM's products and services. These boards are: the Publications Board, Special Interest Group (SIG) Governing Board, Education Board, and Membership Activities Board.

Meetings

ACM and the ACM Special Interest Groups (SIGs) sponsor, co-sponsor and cooperate with more than 120 technical meetings annually. Because ACM provides an objective arena for the discussion of novel and often competing ideas, many of these conferences have become premier world events.

Special Interest Activities

ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIGs) in 34 distinct areas of information technology address varied interests: programming languages, graphics, computer-human interaction, and mobile communications, to name a few. Each SIG organizes itself around those specific activities that best serve both its practitioner- and research-based constituencies. Many SIGs sponsor conferences and workshops and offer members reduced rates for registration and proceedings. SIGs also produce newsletters and other publications or support lively e-mail forums for information exchange.

ACM Special Interest Groups

SIGACCESS		Accessibility and Computing

SIGACT		Algorithms and Computation Theory

SIGAda		Ada Programming Language

SIGAPL		APL Programming Language

SIGAPP		Applied Computing

SIGARCH		Computer Architecture

SIGART		Artificial Intelligence

SIGBED		Embedded Systems

SIGCAS		Computers and Society

SIGCHI		Computer-Human Interaction

SIGCOMM		Data Communication

SIGCSE		Computer Science Education

SIGDA		Design Automation

SIGDOC		Systems Documentation

SIGecom		Electronic Commerce

SIGGRAPH		Computer Graphics

SIGGROUP		Groupware

SIGIR		Information Retrieval

SIGITE		Information Technology Education

SIGKDD		Knowledge Discovery in Data

SIGMETRICS		Measurement and Evaluation

SIGMICRO		Microprogramming/Microarchitecture

SIGMIS		Management Information Systems

SIGMM		Multimedia

SIGMOBILE		Mobility of Systems, Users, Data & Computing

SIGMOD		Management of Data

SIGOPS		Operating Systems

SIGPLAN		Programming Languages

SIGSAC		Security, Audit & Control

SIGSAM		Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation

SIGSIM		Simulation & Modeling

SIGSOFT		Software Engineering

SIGUCCS	University & College Computing Services

SIGWEB	Hypertext, Hypermedia and Web

Publications

ACM publishes, distributes and archives original research and firsthand perspectives from the world's leading thinkers in computing and information technologies that help computing professionals negotiate the strategic challenges and operating problems of the day. ACM publishes over 35 journals, more than 30 newsletters and over 85 conference proceedings annually. ACM is also recognized world-wide for its published curricula recommendations, both for colleges and universities and for secondary schools that are increasingly concerned with preparing students for advanced education in the information sciences and technologies.

ACM's flagship publication, Communications of the ACM, keeps information technology professionals up-to-date with articles spanning the full spectrum of information technologies in all fields of interest. Examples include object-oriented technology, multimedia, internetworking, and hypermedia. Communications also carries case studies, practitioner-oriented articles, and regular columns, the ACM Forum, and technical correspondence. The monthly magazine is distributed to all ACM members. The recently launched ACM Queue is a monthly magazine created by computing professionals for computing professionals that sets out to define future problems with the sort of detail and intelligence that readers in turn can use to sharpen their own thinking. ACM Queue also offers Queuecasts, monthly downloadable conversations with technology experts. For a complete list of publications, go to http://www.acm.org/dl.

ACM also provides the ACM Digital Library and Online Guide to Computing Literature, the definitive online resources for computing professionals. Richly interlinked, they provide access to ACM's collection of publications and bibliographic citations from the universe of published IT literature. With their personalized online services and extensive search capabilities, the ACM Digital Library and Guide represent ACM's vision of an all-electronic publishing program.

The ACM Digital library contains the citations and full text of articles, representing all of ACM's journals, newsletters, and proceedings. Each citation contains links to other works by the same author; clickable references to their original sources; links to similar articles and critical reviews, if available; and digital object identifiers (DOIs) to easily manage electronic linkages to vendors.

The ACM Online Guide to Computing Literature consists of a bibliographic database of more than 900,000 citations. These citations come from a broad range of information technology publications and publishers. Many of these citations contain abstracts and/or reference sections as well. The books database, for example, contains citations to some 50,000 volumes, with links to commercial vendors that facilitate online purchasing.

Chapters

ACM Professional Chapters and Local SIG (Special Interest Group) Chapters unite colleagues in particular geographical areas, offer the opportunity to gain immediate access to technological advances, and establish a personal networking system in the locale. There are currently more than 125 ACM Professional and Local SIG Chapters worldwide, 25 percent of which are outside the U.S. The chapters host lectures by internationally known computer professionals, sponsor state-of-the-art seminars on the most pressing issues in information technology, conduct volunteer training workshops, and publish informal newsletters.

ACM has established student chapters to provide an opportunity for students to play a more active role in the Association and its professional activities. More than 500 colleges and universities throughout the world participate in the ACM Student Chapter Program, whose aims are to enhance learning through exchange of ideas among students, and between established professionals and students. By encouraging organization of student chapters on college and university campuses, the Association is able to introduce students to the benefits of a professional organization. These benefits include periodic meetings, which encourage and enhance learning through the exchange of ideas among students, and between established professionals and students.

Student Chapter members may take advantage of the activities and services provided by the Association such as the Distinguished Lectureship Program, the International Collegiate Programming Contest, the Student Research Competition, and the Publications Program. Student chapters provide an obvious setting to develop and demonstrate leadership capabilities -- an important factor both to students in career development and professional growth, as well as to the future of the Association.

Awards

ACM recognizes excellence through its eminent series of awards for outstanding technical and professional achievements and contributions in computer science and information technology. ACM sponsors eight major awards, named for the foremost luminaries in the computing field, as well as several other awards that honor distinguished service in information technology. It also names as Fellows each year those outstanding members who have demonstrated achievements in computer science and information technology, and who have made significant contributions to the ACM's mission.

ACM's most prestigious technical award, named for A.M. Turing, a pioneer in the computing field, is accompanied by a prize of $100,000. It is given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field.

In addition to the A.M. Turing Award, other ACM awards include:

ACM Software System Award

ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award

Grace Murray Hopper Award

Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award

Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award

Eugene Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics

Distinguished Service Award

Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award

President's Award

Athena Lecturer Award

Doctoral Dissertation Award

Professional and Public Service Activities

Many of ACM's professional and public service activities of are conducted by standing committees. Examples include Computers and Public Policy, Constitution and Bylaws, Nominating, Elections, USACM Public Policy, Committee on Professional Ethics, and ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

ACM is committed to bringing potentially significant technical and public policy issues to the attention of the ACM membership and community. It sponsors several committees to address these issues, including: the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing; the Committee on Computers and Public Policy; and the US Public Policy Committee (USACM). The ACM Office of Public Policy works with USACM to assist policymakers and the public in understanding information technology issues, and to advance a policy framework that supports innovations in computing and related disciplines.

Conclusion

As the first society in computing, ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery) continues to provide quality content and information, community building, reliability and global vision to its members. With its unique role in advancing the art, science, education and application of computing, ACM is a leading resource for advancing the skills of information technology professionals and for interpreting the impact of information technology on society.

See Also references and a brief bibliography

Bibliography

ACM: The Past 15 Years 1972-1987
Cochran, Anita, Editor
Communications of the ACM
ACM Press, New York, NY
October 1987, Vol. 30, Issue 10
pp. 866-872

Cringely, Robert X.
Accidental Empires
Addison-Wesley, 1992

Fishman, Katharine Davis
The Computer Establishment
McGraw-Hill, 1982

Freiberger, Paul and Swaine, Michael
Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer
New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Goldstine, Herman H.
The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann
Princeton University Press, 1972

Hodges, Andrew
Alan Turing: The Enigma
Simon and Schuster, 1983

McCartney, Scott
ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer
New York: Walker & Company, 1999.

Palfreman, Jon and Swade, Doron
The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age
BBC Books, London, 1991, 208 pp.

Shurkin, Joel
Engines of the Mind: A History of the Computer
W. W. Norton, 1984

The First 25 Years: ACM 1947-1972
Revens, Lee, Editor
Communications of the ACM
ACM Press, New York, NY
July 1972, Vol. 15, Issue 7
pp. 485-490

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