The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer (History of Computing)

The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer

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Early computers would use similar punch cards.

English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The project, funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the world's first computer was actually built. He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM. Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing machine, capable of computing anything that is computable.

The central concept of the modern computer was based on his ideas.

Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University, attempts to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts. Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer that can solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to store information on its main memory. Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a foot by foot room and has 18, vacuum tubes. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid materials and no need for a vacuum.

Thomas Johnson Watson Jr. Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip.

Brochures (36)

Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in for his work. Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse and a graphical user interface GUI. This marks the evolution of the computer from a specialized machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more accessible to the general public. Written in the C programming language, UNIX was portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of choice among mainframes at large companies and government entities.

Due to the slow nature of the system, it never quite gained traction among home PC users. Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing data to be shared among computers. Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware.

The January issue of Popular Electronics magazine features the Altair , described as the "world's first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models.

On April 4, after the success of this first endeavor, the two childhood friends form their own software company, Microsoft. Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS was just 3, It sold like crazy. For the first time, non-geeks could write programs and make a computer do what they wished. It offers color graphics and incorporates an audio cassette drive for storage. Accountants rejoice at the introduction of VisiCalc, the first computerized spreadsheet program.

I was the technical brains — I figured out how to do it, and did it, and documented it.

History of Computers: A Brief Timeline

The first IBM personal computer, code-named "Acorn," is introduced. It has an Intel chip, two floppy disks and an optional color monitor. It also popularizes the term PC. Apple's Lisa is the first personal computer with a GUI. In chapter 4 the emphasis shifts from efforts to aggregate for social and economic policy purposes to the demands of the First World War for knowledge, total knowledge for the more ambitious, of the population through the creation of a universal or national register. The informational needs of war quickly raised the issue of whether the number of partial registers in existence might be brought together into one universal register, duly cross-referenced.

Had this transpired, the current state of computing technology available punch cards had been used for the first time in the census would have raised interesting questions about how it could have been used, but Agar shows that efforts at this time to bureaucratize the British were a failure because of deep-seated cultural and political antipathies towards the state having such capabilities.

Partial registers were thus a hallmark of British government, and have been since as the current Home Secretary is finding in the storm of protests that have erupted against his proposals for a national identity card. Chapters 5 through 7 are also concerned with the relationship between warfare and different information technologies. In chapter 5, Agar discusses how the upward shift in the mechanization of government activities that had occurred during the First World War was then given a further boost between the wars by the implicit bargain struck between the expert movement and the generalists working to Treasury expenditure control ambitions.

Chapter 6 discusses the s as another informational crisis for the British state which was met by the establishment of the Telecommunications Research Establishment which developed radar and the much more widely known Bletchley Park. The British computer industry of the s and s forms the focus of chapter 7, confirming how the computer shaped and in turn was decisively shaped by the Cold War.

The installation of punch-card machines, numbering twenty-six installed or planned in , was to expand rapidly thereafter. By , seven departments had installed or were in the process of ordering computers, while by there were forty-five installed and a program of to more installations planned for the next decade. Agar provides in Table 8.

Agar does not find that explanation wholly satisfactory and argues further that it was at this time that there was a shift in anxieties about threats to the collectivity posed by universal registers to anxieties about threats to individuals which are part-and-parcel of changes in the nature of public trust. Chapter 9 ends with the Data Protection Act , which was the interim product of these concerns. Chapter 10 extends the story to further data protection legislation which came into force in , but is more concerned with the implications of what political scientists call the hollowed-out state for public sector computer projects where in recent years there have been some spectacular disasters, so much so that in Britain today a successful large-scale IT project is considered something of an oxymoron.

His expert movement of mechanizers are no longer centered on Whitehall, for large-scale contracting-out has led to the locus of power — based in knowledge, competence and expertise — now residing in private sector specialists like the multinational EDS. Ironically, of course, this trend has increased the threat to privacy as private sector companies are less accountable than government.

Finally, there is a short concluding chapter which inter alia examines in international context whether British governments were backward in office mechanization and asks whether there are links here with the broader decline literature. This economic historian would have liked rather more evidence on the extent of the efficiency gains attained, rather than those claimed. The Solow paradox is conspicuous for its absence here.

Military/Aerospace

Nonetheless, Agar is to be congratulated for his path-breaking study of a fascinating topic which he has opened up in a way which others can now develop. Specialists, Administrators and Professionals, Johns Hopkins University Press. He is beginning work on a political economy of Thatcherism and continuing to examine the growth consciousness of the s.

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