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@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Deborah Douglas Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 6:47 PM To: members@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@mit.edu * 617-253-1766 phone * 617-253-8994 fax http://web.mit.edu/museum * http://webmuseum.mit.edu * http://museum.mit.edu/150