Computers, Electronic Data, and the Vietnam War
D. F. N. Harrison · Archivaria (Association of Canadian Archivists) · 1988
The government are very keen on amassing statistics.They collect them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful wonderful diagrams.But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.* With so many superlatives, one might see the Vietnam War as unique.It was the most documented war in military history.It was the longest war in American history.It was the war with the greatest public coverage.It was the most visible war to the American and Canadian public, if not the entire world.2No previous war deluged military and civilian alike with so much information.Historians will highlight discussion of computer use by the American military establishment during this period.The Vietnam War was the first war in military history to be run with the full-scale assistance of electronic data.Computers were in place in the White House and the Pentagon in time for large-scale application for war in 1965.By 1968 the American high command had installed computers in Saigon and military data originated thereafter from South Vietnam.