Hi folks, I don't know about the largest, but certainly at the forefront. I'd look to Schlumberger and their and my nemesis Halliburton. Schlumberger produced the first real intelligent system (Prospector) and were big on analogue computers when the latter were in their prime. There is a huge amount of number crunching in seismic and electric subsurface computing. I doubt that they'd exceed the insurance industry (which everyone forgets coz it's so prosaic). I wrote a book lo these many years called Science on the Run which was about the first 20 years of Schlumberger; there is also a more generic history (mine is quirky) which goes longer, but have forgotten the title. take care, geof On 9/13/2010 11:27 PM, Coopersmith, Jonathan wrote:
Debbie, The oil industry has been instrumental in advancing 4-d imaging which is real heavy data crunching. I can't give you specifics, but I would not be surprised that it was the largest user in the pre-Google era. I know (and can give a secondary cite) that in the 1970s the oil industry used encryption to fax logging data from ships and rigs to research labs and their computers.
Jonathan
----- Original Message ----- From: Deborah Douglas<ddouglas@MIT.EDU> To: members@sigcis.org Sent: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:47:25 -0500 (CDT) 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
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