[SIGCIS-Members] ADSEC Final Report, 1950 - declassified, and attached here

[Marc Weber]

This attachment is empty – can you re-send?
Many thanks,
Marc

Marc Weber  |   marc at webhistory.org  |   +1 415 282 6868 
Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum            
1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory
Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org 


On Mar 23, 2014, at 5:23 AM, Paul N. Edwards wrote:

> SIGCISers and SIGCISters - 
> 
> Courtesy of Prof. Willard McCarty, who dug this out with a FOIA request and some help from an archivist and others at Lincoln Labs, here is the 1950 final report of the Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee (ADSEC) — classified until now. Many of you will know that this committee, aka the Valley Committee (for its leader, MIT prof George Valley), played a major role in initiating the SAGE air defense system of the 1950s.
> 
> It’s a fascinating read for the organism/machine metaphors, the cybernetic thinking, and the view of what was seen as possible (and not possible). To me, one of the most interesting thing about it is the awareness that converting analog signals into digital form was even more of a stumbling block than computing itself, which is seen as a relatively trivial matter that would require mainly time to develop computers with enough capacity to track hundreds or thousands of airplanes at once.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________
> 
> Paul N. Edwards
> Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan 
> A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010)
> 
> Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing)
> 
> University of Michigan School of Information
> 3439 North Quad
> 105 S. State Street
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
> (734) 764-2617 (office)                  
> (206) 337-1523  (fax) 
> pne.people.si.umich.edu
> 
> 
> <ADSEC, Final Report 24 October 1950.pdf>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

Marc Weber  |   marc at webhistory.org  |   +1 415 282 6868 
Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum            
1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory
Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20140323/530d99e6/attachment-0001.htm>