Calculating a natural world: Scientists, engineers, and computers in the United States, 1937-1968
Atsushi Akera · Scholarly Commons (University of Pennsylvania) · 1998
This study offers a broad synthesis of the early history of scientific and technical computing in the United States. It also provides one view into the emergence of a new U.S. infrastructure for Cold War research. The computer proves to be a particularly effective lens in this respect, for it was an important research instrument to many different technical disciplines. Moreover, as an expensive technology brought to fruition during the early Cold War years, the developments in computing would touch upon many of the broader policies and decisions with respect to postwar research. The major developments and principal groups described in this dissertation include the work on computing and mathematical tables during the late 1930s, the Eniac project at the University of Pennsylvania, Jay Forrester's Project Whirlwind (M.I.T.), and the early efforts at the National Bureau of Standards. It also describes IBM's technical field representatives, Southern California's systems programmers, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the academic computing centers and computer time-sharing research at M.I.T. and the University of Michigan. In each case, this study describes a particular juncture between knowledge, resources, and the organization of research. It also considers how researchers and their agents work within and across different organizations during their efforts to improve a technology. Individual efforts would redefine the structure and purpose of key institutions, ranging from federal laboratories, to military funding agencies, to professional societies. However, the kinds of actions open to an individual would change as computing technology matured. Their individual and collective actions also came to reflect the more stable arrangements the nation found for carrying out Cold War research.