Zbigniew Stachniak

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
York University, Toronto

* What's New... * Research * Books in Progress * YUCoM Museum *

What's New...

My book Inventing the PC: the MCM/70 Story (MCGill-Queen's University Press, 2011) is out. As soon as the book has stared to arrive at readers' hands, I had began to receive additional information about MCM, the MCM/70, the APL language, and the early microcomputing indutry in Canada. To share this information with readers, I have created the author's deleted scenes page where I will be adding new facts about MCM, additional photographs, and readers' comments. You can also listen to my interview about the book by following this link. Enjoy!

Research Interests

My main research areas are Artificial Intelligence and the History of Computing. My specific research interests are:

• Non-clausal Automated Reasoning Systems
• Propositional Satisfiability
• Tractable and Resource-bounded Reasoning
• History of Microcomputing
• History of Computing in Canada
• History of Logic

Books in Progress

I'm currently working on two book projects in the history of computing. If you have any information, documents, hardware or software objects that are relevant to these projects please contact me.

Worldwide Computer Hobby Movement: Histories and Perspectives
This book is a collaborative project dealing with the worldwide computer hobby activities and their role in the introduction and social acceptance of personal computing in various regions of the world. Its objective is to document the many faces of the microcomputer hobby movements that were formed and developed in diverse socio-political and economic climates. The book is a collection of papers that look at the impact of the computer hobby activities on regional industries and cultures. Its aim is to capture the universal and the distinct, the global and the regional.

Computing in the Clouds: The rise and fall of IPSANET
This book is a corporate history of I.P. Sharp Assoc. -- one of the world's most significant time sharing companies and its IPSANET network.

YUCoM Museum

In December 2002, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, York University, established the York University Computer Museum (YUCoM) -- Canada's first physical museum dedicated exclusively to the history of the Canadian computer industry. The main motivation behind this decision has been to create an academically significant research collection that would provide scholars, students, writers, and the media with primary historical sources to research the development of computer technologies in Canada and their impact on Canadian society. Follow this link for more information on YUCoM.