Another take on replacement - not for economic reasons, but in obsessive obeisance to other values - is the classic, "With Folded Hands".  

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Andrew Meade McGee <amm5ae@virginia.edu> wrote:

Another cultural suggestion to pair with the Desk Set is the May 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone, "The Brain Center at Whipple's." One of those Rod Serlingesque accounts of an efficiency expert who completely automates a factory, laying off all the assembly line workers, until his job too is replaced with a robot. Not the most profound account, but reflective of period anxieties. 

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Andrew Meade McGee
Corcoran Department of History
University of Virginia
PO Box 400180 - Nau Hall
Charlottesville, VA 22904

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM, McMillan, William W <william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:

Don't forget Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set (1957)!

________________________________
From: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of James Cortada [jcortada@umn.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2015 4:03 PM
To: Paul McJones
Cc: members@sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Automation bibliography

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@mcjones.org<mailto:paul@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@si.edu<mailto:CeruzziP@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.


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James W. Cortada
Senior Research Fellow
Charles Babbage Institute
University of Minnesota
jcortada@umn.edu<mailto:jcortada@umn.edu>
608-274-6382

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Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School

Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal 

Value Sensitive Design Research Lab

University of Washington

There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China." 

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