steveanderson.digital

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.

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

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 (possibly 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

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

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.

(Revised and republished April 2nd, 2025)

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. (In 2025, this has changed quite a bit!)

WordStar running in DOS, ca. 1980s (via Wikipedia)

(Revised and republished April 3rd, 2025)

Paper strips shown at faa.gov (Wayback Machine link)

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2002 article on paperwork at The New Yorker.

“The Social Life of Paper” (Wayback Machine link)

Gladwell.com link: http://gladwell.com/the-social-life-of-paper/ (Wayback Machine link)

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.

(Revised and republished April 3rd, 2025)

It’s wonderful to see museums considering their digital presence as an extension of their purpose – online exhibitions and other digital projects greatly enhance the collections. This article at the New York Times describes the interconnectivity between museums and visitors that the digital provides, and also the possibility of connection between museums themselves:

Sooner or later, all museum websites will be interconnected, so that any museum might take advantage of scholarship produced by any other. There’s no reason, after all, that the Museum of Modern Art shouldn’t link its Jackson Pollock page to Pollock pages of museums throughout the world.

...Where is all this going? The British Museum has a succinct answer in the concluding sentence of its About Us page: “The website is not merely a source of information about the collection and the museum, but a natural extension of its core purpose to be a laboratory of comparative cultural investigation.”

I visited the “Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World” exhibition at LACMA a few years ago, and thanks to their digital archive of the exhibit I’m able to share videos like this with my students.

(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)

Craig Robertson, by Christopher Klein at the Boston Globe, 2013.

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.

United States Passport for American epidemiologist, Fred Soper, 1920. National Library of Medicine revised 2025 link, image doesn't seem to load. Wayback Machine link for image.

(Revised and republished April 3rd, 2025)

The Paper Trail Through History (NYTimes gift link), by Jennifer Schuessler, the New York Times, 2012:

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.

(Revised and republished April 3rd, 2025)

Last October I gave a “brown bag” talk (Wayback Machine link) 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.

At the top 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 just above, 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), a mainframe computer 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. The brochure’s cover features a computer processing unit at the center, with punched cards and magnetic tape for data storage.

(Revised and republished April 6th, 2025)