Abstract
This workshop on Technology Measurement has given me the opportunity to return to and critically review work that I had started 20 years ago. At that time I set out to generate a technological history of the digital computer industry[4]. The research was undertaken to develop and implement a methodology for following the evolution of a single technology—general purpose digital computers—in detail. The methodology was to trace the improvements in the technology to obtain a measure of “value” for new developments and to determine the “radicalness” of these developments. This methodology was developed to go beyond the existing research, which at that time consisted of authors' descriptions of what they had observed in the evolution of a technology. Such research consisted in part of authors giving their opinions on what they felt were key developments. Technological historians depended on opinions and expert judgements for determining “important” improvements or innovations and assessing their impact on the technology. The Functional/Structural Measurement that I proposed was intended to change all this by following the history of digital computers and using a precise technique which would flag all the innovations and then measure the value of each.
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