Haigh Exploring the Early Digital

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-030-02152-8
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 213 Seiten

Reihe: History of Computing

Changes in the present challenge us to reinterpret the past, but historians have not yet come to grips with the convergence of computing, media, and communications technology. Today these things are inextricably intertwined, in technologies such as the smartphone and internet, in convergent industries, and in social practices. Yet they remain three distinct historical subfields, tilled by different groups of scholars using different tools. We often call this conglomeration 'the digital,' recognizing its deep connection to the technology of digital computing. Unfortunately, interdisciplinary studies of digital practices, digital methods, or digital humanities have rarely been informed by deep engagement with the history of computing.Contributors to this volume have come together to reexamine an apparently familiar era in the history of computing through new lenses, exploring early digital computing and engineering practice as digital phenomena rather than as engines of mathematics and logic. Most focus on the period 1945 to 1960, the era in which the first electronic digital computers were created and the computer industry began to develop. Because digitality is first and foremost a way of reading objects and encoding information within them, we are foregrounding topics that have until now been viewed as peripheral in the history of computing: betting odds calculators, card file systems, program and data storage, programmable calculators, and digital circuit design practices. Reconceptualizing the 'history of computing' as study of the 'early digital' decenters the stored program computer, repositioning it as one of many digital technologies.

Thomas Haigh is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a visiting Comenius Professor for the History of Computing at Siegen University. He writes the historical reflections column for Communications of the ACM, and from 2005 to 2014 was chair of SIGCIS, the group for historians of information technology. His publications cover a broad range of topics, from the business history of the World Wide Web, to the gendered labor history of data processing and the intellectual history of computer science. He is the primary author of ENIAC in Action (MIT, 2016), editor of Histories of Computing (Harvard, 2011) and the lead editor of the 'Histories of the Internet' special edition of Information & Culture (2015). Haigh is a Fulbright Award winner and in 2017 received the Wilkins and Scranton prizes from the Business History Conference.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Haigh, Thomas

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Foreword;6
2;Acknowledgments;10
3;Contents;11
4;Chapter 1: Introducing the Early Digital;13
4.1;1.1 Digital Materiality;15
4.2;1.2 Digital vs. Analog;16
4.3;1.3 Computer Programs Are Inherently Digital;17
4.4;1.4 Digital Information;23
4.5;1.5 When Was the Early Digital?;24
4.6;1.6 Warming Up to the Early Digital;25
4.7;1.7 Conclusions;28
4.8;References;28
5;Chapter 2: Inventing an Analog Past and a Digital Future in Computing;31
5.1;2.1 Pairings;32
5.2;2.2 Variety;37
5.3;2.3 Criticism;40
5.4;2.4 Hybridity;42
5.5;2.5 The Popular Press;45
5.6;2.6 Conclusion;47
5.7;References;47
6;Chapter 3: Forgotten Machines: The Need for a New Master Narrative;52
6.1;3.1 Totalisators;53
6.1.1;3.1.1 Contested Acceptance;55
6.1.2;3.1.2 Automatic Totalisators;56
6.2;3.2 The Harringay Julius Totalisator;57
6.2.1;3.2.1 Operation: Ticket-Issuing Machines;57
6.2.2;3.2.2 Accumulators and the Aggregation of Bets;59
6.2.3;3.2.3 Multiplexing, Selectors and Controlling Data Flow;61
6.2.4;3.2.4 The Odds Machine and Elementary Trigonometry;62
6.2.5;3.2.5 Overview;66
6.3;3.3 The Spotlight Golf Machine;67
6.3.1;3.3.1 Playing the Game;70
6.3.2;3.3.2 Logic and Control;72
6.3.3;3.3.3 Scrolls and Slots;74
6.3.4;3.3.4 Overview;75
6.4;3.4 Wrap-Up;76
6.5;References;77
7;Chapter 4: Calvin Mooers, Zatocoding, and Early Research on Information Retrieval;80
7.1;4.1 The Computer as a Data Retrieval Device;82
7.2;4.2 Edge-Notched Cards;86
7.3;4.3 Zatocoding;89
7.4;4.4 Hashing;92
7.5;4.5 Conclusion;94
7.6;References;95
8;Chapter 5: Switching the Engineer’s Mind-Set to Boolean: Applying Shannon’s Algebra to Control Circuits and Digital Computing (1938–1958);98
8.1;5.1 Ingenuity: Bringing Theory to Practice (1938–1951);101
8.2;5.2 Getting out of the Black Box (1950–1960);104
8.2.1;5.2.1 The Engineers’ Building Blocks;104
8.3;5.3 The Mathematicians’ Diagrammatic Notation;106
8.4;5.4 Theory and Practice Revisited;108
8.5;References;109
9;Chapter 6: The ENIAC Display: Insignia of a Digital Praxeology;111
9.1;6.1 Introduction;112
9.2;6.2 The Enigmatic Nature of the Display;113
9.3;6.3 The Public Nature of the Display;117
9.4;6.4 The Discrete Nature of the Display;121
9.5;References;124
10;Chapter 7: The Evolution of Digital Computing Practice on the Cambridge University EDSAC, 1949–1951;127
10.1;7.1 Formation of the University Mathematical Laboratory;127
10.2;7.2 EDSAC and the Development of Programming;129
10.3;7.3 The Subroutine Library and Documentation;132
10.4;7.4 A Digital Computer Service and the Summer Schools;135
10.5;7.5 Applications and the Priorities Committee;138
10.5.1;7.5.1 EDSAC’s Digital Legacy;142
10.6;References;143
11;Chapter 8: The Media of Programming;145
11.1;8.1 Automation and Programming;146
11.2;8.2 Storing Instructions on Tapes;148
11.2.1;8.2.1 Addressable Memory and the Format of Instructions;148
11.2.2;8.2.2 Controlling Computations;149
11.3;8.3 Programming with Multiple Instruction Sequences;150
11.3.1;8.3.1 Program Pulses and Program Controls;151
11.3.2;8.3.2 Multiple Tapes;153
11.4;8.4 Sequential Electronic Memory;154
11.4.1;8.4.1 The Invention of Delay Line Memory;154
11.4.2;8.4.2 The Unification of Memory;155
11.4.3;8.4.3 Memory in the First Draft;156
11.4.4;8.4.4 Coding in the First Draft;158
11.4.5;8.4.5 Short Delay Lines;160
11.4.6;8.4.6 Optimum Coding and the Pilot ACE;161
11.5;8.5 Random-Access Memory;162
11.6;8.6 Conclusions;165
11.7;References;166
12;Chapter 9: Foregrounding the Background: Business, Economics, Labor, and Government Policy as Shaping Forces in Early Digital Computing History;169
12.1;9.1 Types of Entrants in Early Digital Computing;171
12.2;9.2 The US Business Climate and Its Impact on Early Digital Computing;174
12.3;9.3 The US Labor Environment and Its Impact on Early Digital Computing;176
12.4;9.4 Science Policy and Scientific Institutions in the Rise of the US Early Digital Computing Field;180
12.5;9.5 Conclusions;185
12.6;References;185
13;Chapter 10: “The Man with a Micro-calculator”: Digital Modernity and Late Soviet Computing Practices;189
13.1;10.1 The Making of a Commodity;192
13.2;10.2 Quirks and Tricks;196
13.3;10.3 Collective and Algorithmic;201
13.4;10.4 Digital Domestic;203
13.5;10.5 Conclusions: The Digital Unbound;206
13.6;References;208
14;Index;211