They are important to our history, particularly as they represent the beginning steps in a fundamentally new technology. I would argue that our efforts to pres

They are important to our history, particularly as they represent the beginning steps in a fundamentally new technology. I would argue that our efforts to preserve what is a unique time in computing history, the birth of the electronic computer (and the software abstractions they support), has at best been feeble, and at worst derelict. Generally we have made a passable effort at preserving good examples of the early machines, however our effort around preserving the important milestones for software has been dismal. Trying to reconstruct a coherent view of the history of ideas across the early software arena is now problematic and daily becoming more difficult. Summoning a small amount of polemic our attempts so far at preserving the software side are akin to burning 99% of oil paintings, since "surely one example of an oil painting represents all of them" approach to the history of software. A small group is making an effort to find and capture software artifacts: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/ My own list (solely reflecting my interests) is here: http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/projects/spg http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/projects/spg If anyone is interested in these efforts please consider helping or chasing down software that you consider is important and seeding the Internet where practical.