computers and management science
Dear SIGCIS colleagues: I am hoping that your collective wisdom might help me check out a claim. The British cybernetician Stafford Beer claims that the Ferranti Pegasus 1 machine he bought in 1956 was the only computer at that time dedicated entirely to applications in management science. Do you know of any other examples of computers fully dedicated to management science applications during this time period? Many thanks, -- Eden Medina Assistant Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University edenm@indiana.edu<mailto:edenm@indiana.edu> www.informatics.indiana.edu/edenm<http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/edenm>
Dear Eden, What in heaven would be the purport of such claim? Computers were not only expensive, they involved major investments, certainly machines the size of Pegasus. Hence, the legitimation for making such investment was seldomly based on the single use for one field of application, or rather for one department in an enterprise or university. Historians usually can trace the considerations leading to the actual purchase in the company archives. Also one may be able to guess where (in which subdepartment) the first initiative to such deep investment in modernizing business originated. How the machine was in fact used, once installed, is much harder to reconstruct. Did the administrative support staff actually get to use the computer or were they pushed out by the scientific computers from the laboratory departments. Were management scientists favored before the statisticians and the down to earth daily bookkeeping? In the incidental case where a logbook is preserved, or where a very early computing center kept statistics, one may be able to tell something about who was using the machine. So, what could be the meaning of "dedicated to"? Was that "dedicated" on the level of legitimation of the purchase, or was it "dedicated" in terms of seconds and minutes of use of the system? Let alone that we could judge the claim of "entirely" or even "first". Rather, to us historians being aware of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms around the use of computers, simply power struggles if you will, the claim of "dedicated entirely" made in a first person account has a clear intent. Other users, other interested parties, were succesfully made invisible, at least in the account of the "management science" department. Probably bookkkeeping use didnot count, or was counted under management science in the first place, etcetera. Rather than investigating the claim, my suggestion would be to investigate the fact that such claim was made, when and by whom. Best, Gerard Alberts ________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org on behalf of Medina, Eden Sent: Fri 17-7-2009 17:11 To: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] computers and management science Dear SIGCIS colleagues: I am hoping that your collective wisdom might help me check out a claim. The British cybernetician Stafford Beer claims that the Ferranti Pegasus 1 machine he bought in 1956 was the only computer at that time dedicated entirely to applications in management science. Do you know of any other examples of computers fully dedicated to management science applications during this time period? Many thanks, -- Eden Medina Assistant Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University edenm@indiana.edu www.informatics.indiana.edu/edenm
That's a good point from Gerard (and from Burt, off the list) In my view "management science" is close to meaningless in this context. Or at least needs to be historicized. It's clearly an aspirational term and is new in the post WWII era, though you'll also notice that it's merely an inversion of "scientific management" and so has no inherent difference. He's probably using it to distinguish management research from the work of actual managers and administrators (on one hand) and actual scientists and engineers (on the other). So was it the first? Quite possibly, but it's an odd claim as it relies on what a computer was NOT used for rather than what it was used for. The rise of operations research was inseparable from the computer, and OR would be included in any plausible definition of "management science." Likewise the LEO team were very advanced in their business applications, and did OR type work on their machine earlier. But they also ran payroll, etc which Beer would probably stigmatize as an administrative chore beneath the dignity of management science. So you need to reformulate the claim to have something that can be given a definite answer. Maybe what Beer is really saying is "I headed the first management research group well supported enough to order its own computer without having to share it with people doing production work." Though as Gerard says we'd need log books to know if they successfully defended it against geologists and engineers once it arrived. Tom From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Alberts, G. Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 11:25 AM To: Medina, Eden; members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] computers and management science Dear Eden, What in heaven would be the purport of such claim? Computers were not only expensive, they involved major investments, certainly machines the size of Pegasus. Hence, the legitimation for making such investment was seldomly based on the single use for one field of application, or rather for one department in an enterprise or university. Historians usually can trace the considerations leading to the actual purchase in the company archives. Also one may be able to guess where (in which subdepartment) the first initiative to such deep investment in modernizing business originated. How the machine was in fact used, once installed, is much harder to reconstruct. Did the administrative support staff actually get to use the computer or were they pushed out by the scientific computers from the laboratory departments. Were management scientists favored before the statisticians and the down to earth daily bookkeeping? In the incidental case where a logbook is preserved, or where a very early computing center kept statistics, one may be able to tell something about who was using the machine. So, what could be the meaning of "dedicated to"? Was that "dedicated" on the level of legitimation of the purchase, or was it "dedicated" in terms of seconds and minutes of use of the system? Let alone that we could judge the claim of "entirely" or even "first". Rather, to us historians being aware of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms around the use of computers, simply power struggles if you will, the claim of "dedicated entirely" made in a first person account has a clear intent. Other users, other interested parties, were succesfully made invisible, at least in the account of the "management science" department. Probably bookkkeeping use didnot count, or was counted under management science in the first place, etcetera. Rather than investigating the claim, my suggestion would be to investigate the fact that such claim was made, when and by whom. Best, Gerard Alberts _____ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org on behalf of Medina, Eden Sent: Fri 17-7-2009 17:11 To: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] computers and management science Dear SIGCIS colleagues: I am hoping that your collective wisdom might help me check out a claim. The British cybernetician Stafford Beer claims that the Ferranti Pegasus 1 machine he bought in 1956 was the only computer at that time dedicated entirely to applications in management science. Do you know of any other examples of computers fully dedicated to management science applications during this time period? Many thanks, -- Eden Medina Assistant Professor of Informatics School of Informatics and Computing Indiana University edenm@indiana.edu www.informatics.indiana.edu/edenm
Dear Eden, I share many of Gerard's concerns about the unmeasurability of such claims and even how dubious making them might be. However, as a positivist (are there any others on this list?) I am inclined to take the claim at face value and see what they might mean. So while "first" is likely unprovable, I do think it would be interesting to say "most computers were bought to do payroll or missile trajectories and this one was bought to do management science." I suspect it would be relatively easy to document the "typical" motivation or application for computers in the era, even if the actual use (post hoc) is not easily measured. (Ideally, you'd want a list of who had login accounts, and if necessary assume each used their account proportionately). But in some ways, the inputs question is less interesting than the outputs question. If Beer was the first boy in the invisible college of his discipline to have a new toy, what did he do with it? Is there any evidence that this strategic foresight (or dumb luck) enabled him to advance his field in ways that his less-endowed rivals could not? I would find it terribly interesting if Beer has the best computing power but the major advances in numerical approaches to management science were being made elsewhere. IIRC, the field's major scientific prize (originally from ORSA, now INFORMS) is named after a mathematician who made his most important contributions before these sorts of computers existed. Joel On 6:25 PM +0200 7/17/09, Alberts, G. hath said:
What in heaven would be the purport of such claim? Computers were not only expensive, they involved major investments, certainly machines the size of Pegasus. Hence, the legitimation for making such investment was seldomly based on the single use for one field of application, or rather for one department in an enterprise or university. Historians usually can trace the considerations leading to the actual purchase in the company archives. Also one may be able to guess where (in which subdepartment) the first initiative to such deep investment in modernizing business originated. How the machine was in fact used, once installed, is much harder to reconstruct. Did the administrative support staff actually get to use the computer or were they pushed out by the scientific computers from the laboratory departments. Were management scientists favored before the statisticians and the down to earth daily bookkeeping? In the incidental case where a logbook is preserved, or where a very early computing center kept statistics, one may be able to tell something about who was using the machine. So, what could be the meaning of "dedicated to"? Was that "dedicated" on the level of legitimation of the purchase, or was it "dedicated" in terms of seconds and minutes of use of the system? Let alone that we could judge the claim of "entirely" or even "first".
Rather, to us historians being aware of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms around the use of computers, simply power struggles if you will, the claim of "dedicated entirely" made in a first person account has a clear intent. Other users, other interested parties, were succesfully made invisible, at least in the account of the "management science" department. Probably bookkkeeping use didnot count, or was counted under management science in the first place, etcetera.
Rather than investigating the claim, my suggestion would be to investigate the fact that such claim was made, when and by whom.
On 11:11 AM -0400 7/17/09, Medina, Eden wrote:
I am hoping that your collective wisdom might help me check out a claim. The British cybernetician Stafford Beer claims that the Ferranti Pegasus 1 machine he bought in 1956 was the only computer at that time dedicated entirely to applications in management science. Do you know of any other examples of computers fully dedicated to management science applications during this time period?
participants (4)
-
Alberts, G. -
Joel West -
Medina, Eden -
Thomas Haigh