[SIGCIS-Members] petroleum and computers

Ceruzzi, Paul CeruzziP at si.edu
Tue Sep 14 06:52:22 PDT 2010


Oh, one other thing:

Texas Instruments, where Jack Kilby worked and where a lot of advanced R&D on solid-state computing was done, started out as a geophysical exploration company, looking for oil deposits based on seismic data. In addition to their well-known pioneering work on silicon transistors, pocket calculators, integrated circuits, and mobile communications devices, they also built a competitive supercomputer, the "ASC,"  in the mid-1960s. 

Paul E. Ceruzzi, MRC 311, National Air and Space Museum, PO Box 37012, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013-7012. phone: 202-633-2414. 

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Deborah Douglas
Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 6:47 PM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] petroleum and computers

Colleagues,

Recently, I received a question about a claim that the petroleum- 
seeking geophysics industry was once the greatest consumer of  
computers, only surpassed at some later point by the federal  
government.  No citation was given and there is quite a bit of  
skepticism but where would you advise us to look to refute this claim  
(or perhaps my own aerospace bias is too strong and the claim is true!).

Thanks,

Debbie Douglas


Deborah G. Douglas, Ph.D.
Curator of Science and Technology
MIT Museum, N51-209
265 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
ddouglas at mit.edu *  617-253-1766 phone  *  617-253-8994 fax
http://web.mit.edu/museum  *  http://webmuseum.mit.edu * http://museum.mit.edu/150



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