Query about invention of wired networking
Doug, I suggest you think about this question in the context of signalling and communications more broadly. Specifically, consider the genealogy of telegraphy, which begins with connected machines and includes the idea of remote automation, predating Turing by centuries. Best, Dennis Dennis Yi Tenen Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature Data Science Institute, Affiliated Member, Data, Media and Society Columbia University denten.github.io/ | @dennistenen <https://twitter.com/dennistenen> | 415.215.3315 *Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation <http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26821>* On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 5:44 PM Douglas Lucas <dal@riseup.net> wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind *Computable Numbers* (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper *Computable Numbers* invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in *Computable Numbers *came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, *Computable Numbers* is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hello Doug, First off, you’ll find that while mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists often suggest that the computers constructed in the 1940s were in some way inspired or prompted by Turing’s theoretical work, the professional historians who’ve looked at the period generally agree that they weren’t. You’ll see some pointers to relevant work in my snappy summary “Actually, Turing Did Not Invent the Computer.” https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/1/170862-actually-turing-did-not-invent-... The impetus to provide remote access to computers likewise came from practical needs of the 1950s and early 1960s rather than theory. Two important early examples are the SAGE air defense network, described by Paul Edwards in _The Closed World_ and timesharing at Dartmouth University (and elsewhere) to provide multiple users with simultaneous interactive access to a single computer, described by Joy Rankin in _A People’s History of Computing in the United States_. The idea of connecting several computers together for general purpose communication, rather than hooking up terminals, peripherals, or data capture devices to a single computer, came slightly later. The idea was first realized in the ARPANET, which evolved to become the Internet. A great deal has been written on its history, beginning with Janet Abbate’s classic _Inventing the Internet_. I’d also recommend Mitch Waldrop’s _The Dream Machine_ for a broader look at interactive computing, timesharing, and networking in the era. In this case there was a conceptual work that predated and heavily influenced the actual network: Paul Baran’s description of what became known as packet switching. Though the relative conceptual contributions of Paul Baran, Leonard Kleinrock, and Louis Pouzin to the ideas that underlie these networks have been enthusiastically debated. You might look at the articles published in the journal Internet Histories, including several relevant publications by Morton Bay, for more on this topic. See https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rint20. Also Andrew Russell’s _Open Standards and the Digital Age_. And many others – it’s a substantial literature, much too large to describe in a single message, but if you want to know about the history of networking you should read on this topic rather than about Turing…. Best wishes, Tom From: Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of Douglas Lucas Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2021 4:44 PM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking Dear SIGCIS members, I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind Computable Numbers (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer: As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in Computable Numbers came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices. But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)? To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, Computable Numbers is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers. I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being. Thanks much, Doug Lucas
Doug,I am a bit impatient with anything that perpetuates the It All Began with Turing mythology. I have not yet read Tom Haigh's article arguing that Turing did not invent the computer but I very much agree with the title. The leaders of the team that developed Eniac were Mauchly, a physicist, who was partly inspired by the counting circuits being used by physicists in the 1930s to count pulses, and Eckert, an electronic engineer, who was partly inspired by devices using multiple vacuum tubes. Eckert told me very emphatically that he had never even heard of Turing during the Eniac project. Turing may have played a (small or large) role in the British wartime Colossus, but that machine had little influence on subsequent computer development, because it was foolishly destroyed and then kept secret for many years.I am not sure where you want to go with your project, but perhaps there is some relevance in Binac, a one-off machine that the Eckert-Mauchly company built in the late forties or very early fifties. It was two processing units connected to each other, primarily, as I remember the story, for backup rather than for communication. Nancy Stern discusses it in her book, and there have been subsequent articles in the Annals.Peter EcksteinSent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy Tablet -------- Original message --------From: thomas.haigh@gmail.com Date: 8/24/21 6:14 PM (GMT-05:00) To: 'Douglas Lucas' <dal@riseup.net>, members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking Hello Doug, First off, you’ll find that while mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists often suggest that the computers constructed in the 1940s were in some way inspired or prompted by Turing’s theoretical work, the professional historians who’ve looked at the period generally agree that they weren’t. You’ll see some pointers to relevant work in my snappy summary “Actually, Turing Did Not Invent the Computer.” https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/1/170862-actually-turing-did-not-invent-... The impetus to provide remote access to computers likewise came from practical needs of the 1950s and early 1960s rather than theory. Two important early examples are the SAGE air defense network, described by Paul Edwards in _The Closed World_ and timesharing at Dartmouth University (and elsewhere) to provide multiple users with simultaneous interactive access to a single computer, described by Joy Rankin in _A People’s History of Computing in the United States_. The idea of connecting several computers together for general purpose communication, rather than hooking up terminals, peripherals, or data capture devices to a single computer, came slightly later. The idea was first realized in the ARPANET, which evolved to become the Internet. A great deal has been written on its history, beginning with Janet Abbate’s classic _Inventing the Internet_. I’d also recommend Mitch Waldrop’s _The Dream Machine_ for a broader look at interactive computing, timesharing, and networking in the era. In this case there was a conceptual work that predated and heavily influenced the actual network: Paul Baran’s description of what became known as packet switching. Though the relative conceptual contributions of Paul Baran, Leonard Kleinrock, and Louis Pouzin to the ideas that underlie these networks have been enthusiastically debated. You might look at the articles published in the journal Internet Histories, including several relevant publications by Morton Bay, for more on this topic. See https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rint20. Also Andrew Russell’s _Open Standards and the Digital Age_. And many others – it’s a substantial literature, much too large to describe in a single message, but if you want to know about the history of networking you should read on this topic rather than about Turing…. Best wishes, Tom From: Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of Douglas LucasSent: Tuesday, August 24, 2021 4:44 PMTo: members@sigcis.orgSubject: [SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking Dear SIGCIS members,I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind Computable Numbers (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in Computable Numbers came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, Computable Numbers is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.Thanks much,Doug Lucas
Dear Doug, For the networking of computers, consider, for example, Turing's off-the-cuff remark to a London Times reporter about a computer writing sonnets for another computer, which suggests machines communicating directly with each other: London Times, 11 June 1949, quoted and discussed in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing, the Enigma (2014/1983), 510f. For another, see "G.E. to use 2 'brains'" in the New York Times, 30 December 1954, about a "four-way hook-up for the rapid processing of engineering and research problems on two giant electronic 'brains'". But these are only two instances I found accidentally in the course of looking for something else. I suspect that the NYT instance has more than a little to do with early automation, which in origin was all about a shift from individual operations of separate machines to a continuous process of manufacture controlled by what we'd call a computer (in the newspapers, 'brain'). Another (as has been mentioned) is person-to-person or station-to-station communications; see, for example, Mountbatten's expansive address to the British Institution of Radio Engineers, reported in the London Times, 1 November 1946 in "An electronic brain solving abstruse problems: Valves with memory", where war-time communications and the new 'brains' share the same column. A much older source is Victorian projections of the human nervous and circulatory systems, for which see a brief mention on p. 31 in my "Residue of uniqueness", Historical Social Research 37.3 (2012), 24-45, esp. Laura Otis' Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century (2001). I hope this helps. Yours, WM On 24/08/2021 22:44, Douglas Lucas wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind /Computable Numbers/ (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in /Computable Numbers /came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, /Computable Numbers/ is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- Willard McCarty, Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk
Thank you for the helpful answer and all the great citations! On 2021-08-24 23:19, Willard McCarty wrote:
Dear Doug,
For the networking of computers, consider, for example, Turing's off-the-cuff remark to a London Times reporter about a computer writing sonnets for another computer, which suggests machines communicating directly with each other: London Times, 11 June 1949, quoted and discussed in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing, the Enigma (2014/1983), 510f. For another, see "G.E. to use 2 'brains'" in the New York Times, 30 December 1954, about a "four-way hook-up for the rapid processing of engineering and research problems on two giant electronic 'brains'". But these are only two instances I found accidentally in the course of looking for something else.
I suspect that the NYT instance has more than a little to do with early automation, which in origin was all about a shift from individual operations of separate machines to a continuous process of manufacture controlled by what we'd call a computer (in the newspapers, 'brain'). Another (as has been mentioned) is person-to-person or station-to-station communications; see, for example, Mountbatten's expansive address to the British Institution of Radio Engineers, reported in the London Times, 1 November 1946 in "An electronic brain solving abstruse problems: Valves with memory", where war-time communications and the new 'brains' share the same column. A much older source is Victorian projections of the human nervous and circulatory systems, for which see a brief mention on p. 31 in my "Residue of uniqueness", Historical Social Research 37.3 (2012), 24-45, esp. Laura Otis' Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century (2001).
I hope this helps.
Yours, WM
On 24/08/2021 22:44, Douglas Lucas wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind /Computable Numbers/ (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in /Computable Numbers /came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, /Computable Numbers/ is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
And for the political dimension of the networking question, see Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928), Public Relations (1945); his "The engineering of consent" (1947); and Harold Lasswell, "The study and practice of propaganda" (1969). Bernays was, as I recall, Sigmund Freud's nephew. Yours, W On 25/08/2021 07:34, Douglas Lucas wrote:
Thank you for the helpful answer and all the great citations!
On 2021-08-24 23:19, Willard McCarty wrote:
Dear Doug,
For the networking of computers, consider, for example, Turing's off-the-cuff remark to a London Times reporter about a computer writing sonnets for another computer, which suggests machines communicating directly with each other: London Times, 11 June 1949, quoted and discussed in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing, the Enigma (2014/1983), 510f. For another, see "G.E. to use 2 'brains'" in the New York Times, 30 December 1954, about a "four-way hook-up for the rapid processing of engineering and research problems on two giant electronic 'brains'". But these are only two instances I found accidentally in the course of looking for something else.
I suspect that the NYT instance has more than a little to do with early automation, which in origin was all about a shift from individual operations of separate machines to a continuous process of manufacture controlled by what we'd call a computer (in the newspapers, 'brain'). Another (as has been mentioned) is person-to-person or station-to-station communications; see, for example, Mountbatten's expansive address to the British Institution of Radio Engineers, reported in the London Times, 1 November 1946 in "An electronic brain solving abstruse problems: Valves with memory", where war-time communications and the new 'brains' share the same column. A much older source is Victorian projections of the human nervous and circulatory systems, for which see a brief mention on p. 31 in my "Residue of uniqueness", Historical Social Research 37.3 (2012), 24-45, esp. Laura Otis' Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century (2001).
I hope this helps.
Yours, WM
On 24/08/2021 22:44, Douglas Lucas wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind /Computable Numbers/ (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in /Computable Numbers /came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, /Computable Numbers/ is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- Willard McCarty, Professor emeritus, King's College London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist www.mccarty.org.uk
Hello Doug, Other members (particularly Tom Haigh and Peter Eckstein) have objected already that Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers was essentially a solution to an abstract problem of mathematical logic, NOT the invention/project of a universal computer, which appeared a decade later in the ENIAC team and the Von Neumann reports. (Warning: You've innocently walked into a worldwide quarrel "Historians vs. Martin Davis' The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing" !) Yet this does not alter the main object of your query, to which the answer is definitely your option n°2. As far as I know, just like designing the first computers was essentially an engineers' effort (inventing storage devices, etc.), "people first begin hooking computers up to one another experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening". Peter Eckstein's message mentions Binac, which is a remarkable "first" case; it was designed by an engineers' company to solve a practical problem.
From what I have seen in Europe, the teams which designed early computers included telecom engineers, who quite "naturally" experimented with distant connections between a computer and a teleprinter, then imagined how to integrate computers in data networks and found a need for that in air-defense systems. An example is given in the memoirs of FH Raymond, published in 1989 in the Annals of the History of Computing , "SEA: An Adventure with a Sad Ending": This small French computer company demonstrated in 1955 a remote processing link between its Paris computer and a teleprinter installed in Brussels at a professional fair. Shortly after, Raymond wrote a report suggesting to replace, in the future, paper with electronic data in the phone directory. His company simultaneously participated in the design of computerized air-defense systems (the contract was finally won by IBM France in 1958), which brings us nearer to the interconnection of computers, not just to remote-processing. France was some 5 years behind the US and Britain in computer development, so what I describe here certainly goes for other countries. The Soviet side is particularly interesting (see "InterNyet", Sacha Gerovitch's publications, etc.)
For more suggestions of readings, I would just copy-paste Tom Haigh's message. Regarding theoretical work, one could add a subsidiary question : To what extent were theoretical studies of digital networks extensions of studies about data flows within a computer (queuing problems, etc.), and what were the radically novel problems raised by digital network design? Best, Pierre Pierre Mounier-Kuhn CNRS, Sorbonne Université & CentraleSupelec https://cnrs.academia.edu/PierreMounierKuhn http://laboutique.edpsciences.fr/produit/846/9782759818198/Histoire%20illust... http://www.rdv-histoire.com/mounier-kuhn-pierre-eric De: "Douglas Lucas" <dal@riseup.net> À: "members" <members@sigcis.org> Envoyé: Mardi 24 Août 2021 23:44:24 Objet: [SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking Dear SIGCIS members, I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind Computable Numbers (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer: As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in Computable Numbers came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices. But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)? To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, Computable Numbers is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers. I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being. Thanks much, Doug Lucas _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
As to computers connected together, I was a bit surprised to see a rather speculative report to the Navy on how digital computers could be interconnected (by radio!) to solve an anti-submarine-warfare problem, written by Forrester and Everett of MIT's Project Whirlwind in October, 1947. This was two years before they had one working computer, let alone two to interconnect. By 1951, they were demonstrating real-time Whirlwind connected to a radar station by telephone links, but it wasn't until SAGE that they had enough hardware to interconnect computers. You can read their report at https://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/45952/MC665_r28_L-2.pdf They obviously didn't get the contract :-) /guy On 8/25/2021 4:32 AM, Pierre Mounier-Kuhn wrote:
Hello Doug,
Other members (particularly Tom Haigh and Peter Eckstein) have objected already that Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ was essentially a solution to an abstract problem of mathematical logic, NOT the invention/project of a universal computer, which appeared a decade later in the ENIAC team and the Von Neumann reports. (Warning: You've innocently walked into a worldwide quarrel "Historians vs. Martin Davis' /The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing"/!)
Yet this does not alter the main object of your query, to which the answer is definitely your option n°2. As far as I know, just like designing the first computers was essentially an engineers' effort (inventing storage devices, etc.), "people first begin hooking computers up to one another experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening". Peter Eckstein's message mentions Binac, which is a remarkable "first" case; it was designed by an engineers' company to solve a practical problem.
From what I have seen in Europe, the teams which designed early computers included telecom engineers, who quite "naturally" experimented with distant connections between a computer and a teleprinter, then imagined how to integrate computers in data networks and found a need for that in air-defense systems. An example is given in the memoirs of FH Raymond, published in 1989 in the /Annals of the History of Computing/, "SEA: An Adventure with a Sad Ending": This small French computer company demonstrated in 1955 a remote processing link between its Paris computer and a teleprinter installed in Brussels at a professional fair. Shortly after, Raymond wrote a report suggesting to replace, in the future, paper with electronic data in the phone directory. His company simultaneously participated in the design of computerized air-defense systems (the contract was finally won by IBM France in 1958), which brings us nearer to the interconnection of computers, not just to remote-processing. France was some 5 years behind the US and Britain in computer development, so what I describe here certainly goes for other countries. The Soviet side is particularly interesting (see "InterNyet", Sacha Gerovitch's publications, etc.)
For more suggestions of readings, I would just copy-paste Tom Haigh's message. Regarding theoretical work, one could add a subsidiary question : To what extent were theoretical studies of digital networks extensions of studies about data flows within a computer (queuing problems, etc.), and what were the radically novel problems raised by digital network design? Best, Pierre
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn CNRS, Sorbonne Université & CentraleSupelec https://cnrs.academia.edu/PierreMounierKuhn http://laboutique.edpsciences.fr/produit/846/9782759818198/Histoire%20illust... http://www.rdv-histoire.com/mounier-kuhn-pierre-eric
------------------------------------------------------------------------ *De: *"Douglas Lucas" <dal@riseup.net> *À: *"members" <members@sigcis.org> *Envoyé: *Mardi 24 Août 2021 23:44:24 *Objet: *[SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind /Computable Numbers/ (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in /Computable Numbers /came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, /Computable Numbers/ is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are athttp://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options athttp://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hello, I don't think anyone has mentioned two early fictional works that might display some relevant ideas. The first one is the 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe" which imagines something like a computer using networked repositories of information and responding to distant quiries, but I have no read the story and I am not sure if two or more machines ever collaborate beyond information storage and retrival. This story is rather celebrated and easily found in various places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe Slighlty later is the 1954 Year of Consent which imagines a 1990 USA taken over by advertising executives with the help of powerful computers that institute a surveillance society with computers doing such things as facial recognition and administering lie detector enabled interrogations. At one point the protaganist needs to evade the facial recognition and relies on rather crude methods to do relying on the fact that facial recognition is first done by less powerful, more easily fooled, local computers and only when they fail are such jobs passed up to the giant brain in DC that can not be so easily stymied. This book was never republished and is somewhat obscure, but can be found at specialized libraries and I think is cheap as a used book. Based on those fictional examples my sense would be the idea of networked computers was in the air even in the late 40s and early 50s. A relevant World War II era technology that the US government commissioned were machines that could convert punched cards (used in IBM accounting machines) into teletype (used in telegraphy) and teletype into punched cards. I assume this was used to ease the collection and sending of data for inventory/logistical type calculations, although one can imagine other uses may have occured such as collecting weather information that might be used in caclualtion. Given this long history of sending machine readable information over wire (and presumably via wireless telegraphy/radio through the air) I think the idea of both remote operation of computers (ie using a teletype to control a computer some distance away) and even having multiple computers collaborate on a calculation effort/program etc. may have come very easily. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV4003.html -- Yours Truly, Allan Olley, PhD http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/ On Tue, 24 Aug 2021, Douglas Lucas wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind Computable Numbers (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in Computable Numbers came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, Computable Numbers is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas
There are echoes of this in early telephone research. An article by John Mills titled, "Communication with Electrical Brains," in *Bell Telephone Quarterly* from 1934 may give you some additional research fodder and an earlier time frame for consideration. Best, Emily On Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 12:48 PM Allan Olley <allan.olley@utoronto.ca> wrote:
Hello, I don't think anyone has mentioned two early fictional works that might display some relevant ideas. The first one is the 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe" which imagines something like a computer using networked repositories of information and responding to distant quiries, but I have no read the story and I am not sure if two or more machines ever collaborate beyond information storage and retrival. This story is rather celebrated and easily found in various places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe Slighlty later is the 1954 Year of Consent which imagines a 1990 USA taken over by advertising executives with the help of powerful computers that institute a surveillance society with computers doing such things as facial recognition and administering lie detector enabled interrogations. At one point the protaganist needs to evade the facial recognition and relies on rather crude methods to do relying on the fact that facial recognition is first done by less powerful, more easily fooled, local computers and only when they fail are such jobs passed up to the giant brain in DC that can not be so easily stymied. This book was never republished and is somewhat obscure, but can be found at specialized libraries and I think is cheap as a used book. Based on those fictional examples my sense would be the idea of networked computers was in the air even in the late 40s and early 50s. A relevant World War II era technology that the US government commissioned were machines that could convert punched cards (used in IBM accounting machines) into teletype (used in telegraphy) and teletype into punched cards. I assume this was used to ease the collection and sending of data for inventory/logistical type calculations, although one can imagine other uses may have occured such as collecting weather information that might be used in caclualtion. Given this long history of sending machine readable information over wire (and presumably via wireless telegraphy/radio through the air) I think the idea of both remote operation of computers (ie using a teletype to control a computer some distance away) and even having multiple computers collaborate on a calculation effort/program etc. may have come very easily. https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV4003.html -- Yours Truly, Allan Olley, PhD
http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/
On Tue, 24 Aug 2021, Douglas Lucas wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members,
I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news
and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind Computable Numbers (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in Computable Numbers came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did
hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a
subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, Computable Numbers is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion
outlets on hacktivism people first begin theorist list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hi Doug, There were more early connections than you might think. The electronic computer was largely built out of off-the-shelf parts from the then-100-year old telecom industry: relays, plugboards, vacuum tubes, etc. Leaving aside the question of their direct influence on the very first computers, both Alan Turing and Claude Shannon worked on voice encoding for telecommunications, and Shannon’s initial work on information theory was largely at Bell Labs and in that context. The transistor itself was invented in the late 1940s at Bell Labs. The modem dates back to 1949. There are lots of other examples. So while early computers may have been largely standalone, they partly grew out of the telecom industry. They even borrowed paper tape readers from telegraph equipment, not to mention the teleprinter to be used as a computer terminal. Most undersea data cables today still follow the routes laid down in the 19th century for telegraphy. In fact, part of the reason most early computers were standalone is that communication in general was already well-automated and thus cheap. By contrast calculation and data processing (the latter even with punched card equipment) remained very expensive, and was an attractive market for early computer companies. Computers communicated with their own peripherals from early on, but most early companies saw little market value in making them connect easily with each other. Only specialized users like militaries bothered to try until the later 1960s, and the rest is networking history. Info on some of the above is in the online version of our “Revolution” exhibition at the Computer History Museum, see Networking gallery here: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/networking/19/371 <https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/networking/19/371>. The exhibition also covers the general history of networking and computing Many histories tend to focus on either computing or telecom. For a reference that looks specifically at the intertwined history of computing and telecom/datacom, I suggest Jim Pelkey’s History of Computer Communications, which we host online at CHM along with transcripts of his 80+ original interviews (https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/ <https://historyofcomputercommunications.info/>). Jim and Andrew Russell are doing an update of the book with ACM Press. Best, Marc p.s. In terms of air gaps, note that even standalone early personal computers got viruses! They simply arrived via floppy disk – sneakernet – rather than actual networks. Marc Weber <https://computerhistory.org/profile/marc-weber/> Curatorial Director, Internet History Program Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 marc@webhistory.org | +1 415 282 6868 computerhistory.org/nethistory | Co-founder, Web History Center and Project
On Aug 24, 2021, at 14:44, Douglas Lucas <dal@riseup.net> wrote:
Dear SIGCIS members, I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about Alan Turing and the math behind Computable Numbers (fundamental theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer: As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper Computable Numbers invented the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual chain is clear: first the idea documented in Computable Numbers came into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, initially as standalone, airgapped devices. But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like verbal analogy, Computable Numbers is to airgapped computers as ??? is to wired/cabled networking of computers. I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
Thanks much,
Doug Lucas _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
participants (10)
-
Allan Olley -
Dennis Y.T. -
Douglas Lucas -
Emily Goodmann -
Guy Fedorkow -
Marc Weber -
petereckstein -
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn -
thomas.haigh＠gmail.com -
Willard McCarty