[SIGCIS-Members] Automation bibliography

[James Cortada]

I devote attention to the subject as it related to manufacturing in the
USA, with lots of bibliography, in The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed
the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation, and Retail Industries
(Oxford U Press, 2004).

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Paul McJones <paul at mcjones.org> wrote:

> Paul,
>
> Burt Grad described the creation of GE’s first applications for the UNIVAC
> I in this article:
>
> The First Commercial Computer Application at General Electric
> By: Burton Grad, December 2006
>
> http://ethw.org/First-Hand:The_First_Commercial_Computer_Application_at_General_Electric
>
>
> He said a large team was assigned the task of writing a payroll system for
> the Washer and Dryer Department, while he was assigned the task of writing
> a manufacturing control system for the Dishwasher and Disposer Department.
> It took him about six months, and his programs "operational long before the
> payroll system was completed.”
>
> I’m not sure exactly what manufacturing control referred to, but I suspect
> it involved scheduling and tracking the movement of parts and
> subassemblies, but not actually performing real-time control of any
> machinery.
>
>
> Paul McJones
>
>
> On Jun 15, 2015, at 11:32 AM, Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP at si.edu> wrote:
>
> ... When GE installed one of the first commercial UNIVACs at their
> Louisville, KY appliance plant, they were concerned with the topic of
> automation eliminating jobs and its possible bad publicity. ...
>
> All that from the installation of a vacuum-tube computer with very
> primitive, by modern standards, computing power. A further irony is that
> the UNIVAC, as far as I could tell, did not have anything to do with
> automating production on the factory floor.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion
> list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member
> posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list
> archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and
> you can change your subscription options at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>



-- 
James W. Cortada
Senior Research Fellow
Charles Babbage Institute
University of Minnesota
jcortada at umn.edu
608-274-6382
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20150615/3335214b/attachment-0002.htm>