The Digital Apple

Abstract

Why am I typing out these words in a New York City office building? Because IEEE Spectrum is located in the official global headquarters of the IEEE; when two earlier organizations merged to form the IEEE in 1963, it was written into the founding regulations that HQ would be in NYC. The city was the obvious choice at the time: For decades, New York had been at the heart of global electrical and electronic invention. Edison's first commercial power plant came to life in downtown Manhattan in 1882. During World War II, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon lunched together at the original Bell Telephone Laboratories location in Greenwich Village. And the surrounding area saw the first modern FM radio transmissions, the first transistor, and the first purely electronic color televisions. A new exhibition at the New York Historical Society celebrates this technological heritage. Called Silicon City and open until mid-April, the small but well-curated exhibition focuses on the city's role in the history of computing.