December 2022 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Annals, issue 2022-4
by vahrenkamp2＠gmx.de 09 Dec '22

09 Dec '22

Thank you, David Hemmendinger, for drawing attention to the issue 4 of Annals 2022 and making it available to us. I have looked at the review of the book by Corinna Schlombs Productivity Machines: German Appropriations of American Technology from Mass production to Computer Automation, and I am not entirely convinced. Automation was only a brief but heated debate in the US, Germany and Europe in the 1950s. But computer use in industrial production and administration came later. In the 1950s, there were perhaps two computers in industry and administration in Germany, and perhaps ten in the United States. In this respect, it seems exaggerated to speak of the computer as a productivity machine in the 1950s. It is true that productivity was the buzzword in the Americans' Marshall Plan. But Germany did not need any advice on this, since German industry was producing at a very high level as a result of weapons production in WW2. What today is largely redeemed as automatic production with the use of computers in industry was merely a debate in the 1950s. It is typical of Norbert Wiener who took part in it. But he contributed nothing to the development of the computer. The rationalization debate in the 1920s and the automation debate in the 1950s have been addressed in Germany by many publications by historians, as has the Taylorism debate. Where Corinna Schlombs' book perhaps overestimates U.S. leadership is in the office machinery sector. Germany had a quite competitive industry in office machines, as I have shown in my book "The First Informationexplosion". All the best Richard -- ******************************************** Prof. Dr. Richard Vahrenkamp Logistik Consulting Berlin Phone 0177- 628 3325 E-Mail: Vahrenkamp2(a)gmx.de Web: www.vahrenkamp.org Heubnerweg 11, 14059 Berlin *********************************************

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Annals, issue 2022-4
by Hemmendinger, David 07 Dec '22

07 Dec '22

SIGCIS members, The special issue of Annals of the History of Computing on information technology and demography is now on line at the CSDL and IEEE Xplore: www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2022/04 ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=85 Contents: Introduction: The IT of Demography, Emily Klancher Merchant, Myron P. Gutmann Articles: The Present of the Past: A Sociotechnological Framework for Understanding the Availability of Research Materials, Rebecca Jean Emigh, Johanna Hernández-Pérez Computing Counterinsurgency: The Hamlet Evaluation System (HES) and Databasing During the Vietnam War, Moritz J. Feichtinger When the New Magic was New: The Claritas Corporation and the Clustering of America, Fenwick McKelvey The Missing Link: Data Capture Technology and the Making of a Longitudinal U.S. Census Infrastructure, Katie R. Genadek, J. Trent Alexander Anecdotes department: The Effects of Increases in Computing Power on Demographic Analysis Over the Last 50 Years, Barbara A. Anderson Challenges of Large-Scale Data Processing in the 1990s: The IPUMS Experience, Diana L. Magnuson, Steven Ruggles Book review department: Review of Corinna Schlombs' Productivity Machines: German Appropriations of American Technology From Mass Production to Computer Automation, Devin Kennedy Events & sightings department: A New Book About the First Business Computer, Hilary Caminer, Secretary, LEO Computers Society Enjoy! David Hemmendinger, EIC

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Two podcasts of interest
by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo 06 Dec '22

06 Dec '22

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The first informationexplosion in history
by Richard Vahrenkamp 06 Dec '22

06 Dec '22

Dear SIGCIS, please excuse the "self-promotion": The keyword of the information explosion will be filled in my ebook “The First Information Explosion”. Many examples are given how the use of punch card technology expands the demand for information. The book gives evidence for the suggestion of Theo Pirker that formalization of information induces the growth of the information department in enterprises so that the rationalization is absorbed by expansion. This process is labeled as informationexplosion and the paper portrays the first informationexplosion in history induced by punch card technology. On the basis of the sources, it can be demonstrated in this ebook that the use of punch card technology gave rise to more and more fields of application in the field of commercial data processing. This expansive behavior of information technology can be described by the term informationexplosion. Just as in the fission of the uranium atom 235, a splitting neutron leads to the emission of two more neutrons, triggering a chain reaction with explosion, the introduction of punch card technology in one field creates a hunger for formalized information in neighboring fields and a further expansion of punch card-based analysis. The ebook places punch card (also: punched card) technology in the context of the office machine industry in Germany and discusses the exciting relationship between the two competitors on the market for punch card technology, IBM with its German branch Dehomag and Powers, in Germany, 1909–1939. The punch card technology was based on electrical–mechanical machines as the other office machines before the advent of microelectronics. The question is whether the leading role of the United States in the use of office machines frequently cited by Anglo-American authors really applies. How punch card technology in Germany has advanced from its beginnings is discussed under the heading of rationalisation strategies. The technologies of the punching machine, the sorting machine and the tabulating machine are shown and an example of tabulating a sales table is given. At the example of a chocolate producer a punched card is discussed of how the various products of the chocolate plant are organized on the card. It is interesting to note that the first informationexplosion in history occurred in the field of commercial data processing, not in the field of scientific–technical data processing. Moreover, punch card technology in the first half of the 20th century was characterized by merely slow technical progress, so that the benefits of information processing had not increased through rapid technical progress, as was seen in the second half of the 20th century with microelectronics underlining the expansive power of punch card technology. The ebook focusses on evidence of informationexplosion in Germany. But the arguments apply to other countries as well. Two sources are cited from Bethlehem Steel Works – one of the leading steel works in United States. Bethlehem steel works are an interesting case because Frederic Winslow Taylor worked there as consultant, but he did not mention punch card technology at all. The ebook concludes with an overview of how punch card technology fits into the broader debate about the feminisation of the office. The ebook is available at Amazon. With kind regards from Berlin Richard Vahrenkamp -- ******************************************** Prof. Dr. Richard Vahrenkamp Logistik Consulting Berlin Phone 0177- 628 3325 E-Mail: Vahrenkamp2(a)gmx.de Web: www.vahrenkamp.org Heubnerweg 11 14059 Berlin *********************************************

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Percy Ludgate and Konrad Zuse
by Brian Randell 06 Dec '22

06 Dec '22

Hi: I assumed that after the recent celebration in Dublin of the centenary of Percy Ludgate's death (https://www.scss.tcd.ie/SCSSTreasuresCatalog/literature/TCD-SCSS-V.20221015…) when I drew the short straw and was the member of Brian Coghlan's team investigating Ludgate who was tasked with speaking, I would be able to reduce greatly the time I was spending on Ludgate. Instead, the day before the ceremony, we were alerted by Ralf Buelow to his Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum blog post (https://blog.hnf.de/percy-ludgate-der-unbekannte-computerpionier/) which revealed to us that Ludgate's work on an "Analytical Machine" had been used, in 1960, to attack Konrad Zuse's attempts at patenting the concept of program-controlled digital computer - work that was one of the reasons that Zuse was denied a patent. This attack was by the Triumph office machinery company, citing Ludgate's 1909 paper on his Analytical Machine. The question which intrigues us is how did Triumph and its patent attorney find out about the little-known Irish inventor? (Konrad Zuse later claimed that the company had received help from IBM - we have established that Triumph's patent attorney also worked for IBM.) Since we received this blog post we have been investigating records of Zuse's patent efforts, and trying to find out how news of Ludgate reached Triumph. In so doing we have found that there was significantly more awareness in the USA in the 1930s of Ludgate's work than we had suspected - in particular that a full reference to his 1909 paper was included a 1938 bibliography by Irwen Travis, a colleague of John Mauchly at the Moore School, who in 1946 gave a talk on the history of computers at the famous Moore School Lectures. One of the major sources we would like to be able to search are the voluminous records of the ENIAC patent litigation (1967-1973), since at the trial a number of the witnesses testified regarding their careers and knowledge of early computer developments, as well as any involvement in ENIAC. These records are at the Charles Babbage Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Computer History Museum. However, these very important records are not fully indexed, and not available online, leave alone as searchable PDFs. (If only a project to generate such an online resource could be resourced and undertaken!) We would be pleased to hear from anyone who has detailed knowledge of these ENIAC records, and could guide our efforts to check whether they contain any references to Ludgate's work. Indeed, more generally, we would welcome any information leading to the discovery of other pre-1960 references to Ludgate, beyond the one we are aware of in Maurice Wilkes' book Automatic Digital Computers (Methuen, 1956). Cheers Brian Randell — School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = https://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brianrandell.html

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VIDEO: Restoration of Soviet PDP-11 DVK-3 from Chernobyl
by Joly MacFie 05 Dec '22

05 Dec '22

https://youtu.be/r1EWsWxObjA -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -

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