It was physically demanding labor
Hello, Goodbye - CDS Bids Farewell to Mainframe, Ushers in New Beginning
In 1998 the Catalog Distribution Service of the Library of Congress shutoff its mainframe computer and switched to a new system.
During the 1970s, the mainframes were used primarily to print catalog cards, which CDS once produced by the tens of millions. In those early days, as many as 30 staff members were required simply to service the units, performing such tasks as changing tape reels, threading tape and programming. "It was physically demanding labor," said Mr. Billingsley.
(Originally published on my old site, “The Digital Imaginary” [imaginary.digital], on February 13th, 2015 – revised and republished April 2nd, 2025.)
UCLA Differential Analyzer - 1948 film
UCLA’s 1948 Mechanical Computer Was Simply Gorgeous To Watch in Action (Wayback Machine link), by Matt Novak at Paleofuture, 2013.
I’ll need to get more information on the film clip’s provenance – it’s shown here through Gizmodo’s Vimeo channel without a source reference. It’s listed in the Paleofuture article as released by Popular Science via Paramount Pictures, 1948 (possible through Shields Pictures Inc.).
More information at UCLA, Historical Research Highlights, “The Thinking Machine”
In December of 1977, the last working model of a mechanical differential analyzer in the world is donated by UCLA to the Smithsonian Institution for its pioneering computing display. The differential analyzer introduced much of Southern California industry to automatic computing, but became obsolete beginning in 1960 as it was replaced by computing machines with electronic circuits and vacuum tubes. From 1960 on, it was used mainly as a display piece, clanking away occasionally for student and public demonstrations.
Two more video clips of the UCLA differential analyzers at the Computer History Museum: http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/analog-computers/3/143
(Originally published on my old site, “The Digital Imaginary” [imaginary.digital], on February 12th, 2015 – revised and republished April 2nd, 2025.)
Files and Folders Before Computers
Filing Cabinets, a Neglected Piece of Business History, by Linda Gross, the Hagley Library:
Dr. Robertson is an associate professor of media history at Northeastern University. He explained to us that he is currently researching the early history of the filing cabinet (1890s-1930s). Robertson contends that the filing cabinet has been largely neglected in the history of information technologies, with punch card machines (a clearer precursor to computers) taking a leading role in histories of early 20th century information technologies—this despite the importance of “files” and folders” to how we organize information on computers.
“This Big, Urgent Question of Protection for Operating Files and Records,” Remington Rand Inc. brochure, ca. 1948, Hagley Digital Archives.
(Originally published on my old site, “The Digital Imaginary” [imaginary.digital], on February 11th, 2015 – revised and republished April 2nd, 2025.)
Matthew Kirschenbaum - Track Changes
Kirschenbaum’s Tumblr blog on his book project - http://trackchangesbook.tumblr.com
Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Literary History of Word Processing, Harvard University Press blog post:
It’s interesting to see how Kirschenbaum’s research on the effects of one technological innovation—word processing—is being so shaped by his own embrace of another, social networking. Until recently, it wasn’t often that we got to watch research unfold so publicly, but Kirschenbaum’s style of transparent, internet-based process documentation is becoming more and more common, especially among practitioners of the digital humanities.
Over the years I’ve used WordStar, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and many other word processing programs. At the moment I’m moving to Scrivener for larger projects like my dissertation, and Apple Pages for everyday writing.
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WordStar running in DOS, ca. 1980s (via Wikipedia)[/caption]
Gladwell on the Social Life of Paper
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Paper strips shown at faa.gov[/caption]
Malcolm Gladwell’s 2002 article on paperwork at The New Yorker.
“The Social Life of Paper” (link to The New Yorker) (can’t seem to get the ads out of the way of the text though)
Gladwell.com link: http://gladwell.com/the-social-life-of-paper/ (ad-free, but gladwell.com URLs have been changed, old link no longer works)
It is only if paper’s usefulness is in the information written directly on it that it must be stored. If its usefulness lies in the promotion of ongoing creative thinking, then, once that thinking is finished, the paper becomes superfluous. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Why bother filing at all? Everything we know about the workplace suggests that few if any knowledge workers ever refer to documents again once they have filed them away, which should come as no surprise, since paper is a lousy way to archive information. It’s too hard to search and it takes up too much space. Besides, we all have the best filing system ever invented, right there on our desks — the personal computer. That is the irony of the P.C.: the workplace problem that it solves is the nineteenth-century anxiety.
Q & A with Craig Robertson on The Passport in America
Craig Robertson, by Christopher Klein at the Boston Globe
The assumption behind the system set up after World War I was that you needed an identity document. Of course, this is a time when very few people had driver’s licenses, so the birth certificate was the key document. The US didn’t achieve universal birth registration until 1933, however, and in 1942 the Census Bureau estimated that 40 percent of Americans still lacked birth certificates. So the State Department required those without birth certificates to get sworn statements from one of three people who was deemed to have been able to witness the birth: the mother, a doctor, or a midwife. And if none of those three were available, a friend who was a US citizen had to vouch for your citizenship. So you were no longer seen as a reliable source of your own identity. You needed someone else to verify it.
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United States Passport for American epidemiologist, Fred Soper, 1920 (via National Library of Medicine)[/caption]
Paperwork Studies as an Historical Field
The Paper Trail Through History, by Jennifer Schuessler, the New York Times:
Ms. Gitelman’s argument may seem like an odd lens on familiar history. But it’s representative of an emerging body of work that might be called “paperwork studies.” True, there are not yet any dedicated journals or conferences. But in history, anthropology, literature and media studies departments and beyond, a group of loosely connected scholars are taking a fresh look at office memos, government documents and corporate records, not just for what they say but also for how they circulate and the sometimes unpredictable things they do.
Project poster and talk last October
Last October I gave a “brown bag” talk over lunch in the History Department Library at the University of California, Riverside. I spoke for about 40 minutes and gave a wide overview of my project, using images and video clips to help illustrate my research. It was a great turnout of both professors and graduate students, and I received some terrific feedback that I was able to use for future talks.
On the left is the poster I created for the talk at UCR, and the images come from a variety of primary source materials. The inspiration for the color scheme comes the brochure cover on the right, which is featured in the online exhibit, “Selling the Computer Revolution," at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.
The brochure is for an IBM 705 EDPM (Electronic Data Processing Machine), an IBM mainframe produced in the mid 1950s. Mainframes like the IBM 705 were powerful workhorses in the business world during the postwar era, handling payroll for thousands of employees at a time. The brochure’s cover features a computer processing unit at the center, with punched cards and magnetic tape for data storage shown below.
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The IBM 705 Electronic Data Processing Machine (ca. 1954), showing the mainframe console and magnetic tape data storage units in the background. (via the Computer History Museum).[/caption]
Paperwork Explosion
This video created by Jim Henson in 1967 for IBM makes a great first post. So much anxiety, so little time, if only there was someone to help…like IBM!
Ben Kafka discusses this video in the Conclusion of his book, The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (2012), and also in this online West 86th article:
The “paperwork explosion” expresses both a threat and a wish. The threat, of course, is that we are being overwhelmed by paperwork’s proliferation, its explosion — a threat that historian Ann Blair has recently traced through the early modern period. The wish is to convert all this cumbersome matter into liberating energy, which is exactly what explosions do. From Chaptal’s “electric fluid” to IBM’s “Machines Should Work, People Should Think” to USA.gov’s “Government Made Easy,” we remain attached to the idea that someday, somehow, we can liberate this energy, put it to other uses.
The “liberating energy” that Kafka speaks of also requires containment, it needs direction and control, services which IBM is ready to supply.
Two other aspects of paperwork which I’m researching are: (1) the degree to which IBM is instigating the “paperwork explosion” itself, where is it coming from, who else is worried about it, and (2) how the militaristic response to the demands of paperwork figure into the Cold War environment.