Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865–1956 by James W. Cortada

Abstract

422 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE women office workers, she ends on an uncertain note about their prospects for collective action. Amy Dru Stanley Dr. Stanley, associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of several articles in the field of 19th-century women’s, cultural, and social history. Her book, The Bonds of Contract: Wage Labor and Marriage in the Age of Slave Emancipation, will be published by Cambridge University Press. Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865-1956. By James W. Cortada. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. Pp. xxi+344; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $55.00. In the last decades of the 19th century, the expansion of commercial and government establishments, the ingenuity of a small number of inventors, and the persuasiveness of enterprising salesmen and adver­ tisers combined to produce a growing market for business machines in the United States. The introduction of typewriters, adding and calcu­ lating machines, cash registers, and tabulating machines foreshadowed a thriving 20th-century industry. Manufacturers such as Remington Typewriter Company, Burroughs Adding Machine Company, National Cash Register, and Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company (one of the companies that combined to form IBM) persuaded a variety of custom­ ers that machines, and indeed relatively expensive machines, were necessary for their work. In this volume, James Cortada outlines the early history of these companies and traces their response to the vicissitudes of 20th-century economic turmoil, warfare, and technologi­ cal change. As his title suggests, Cortada is particularly interested in the business practices, markets, and economic resources that allowed some office equipment manufacturers to become successful makers and vendors of electronic computers. Business machines have most often been discussed historically as ingenious mechanisms for carrying out routine tasks. In recent years, a few historians have begun to consider them as products—indeed, as products of fierce competitors. Felt & Tarrant, NCR, and Burroughs, to name only a few companies, not only devised and manufactured objects but also toiled to create and sustain markets for them. They took on rivals, not only in the United States but also worldwide. Cortada uses the approach of a business historian to examine an unusually wide range of machines, with commendable results. Histori­ ans of technology will particularly appreciate the scope of this book, as it draws together a wealth of information about companies that operated over decades. Both the bibliography and the illustrations are admirable. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 423 Readers should be aware of three limitations in Cortada’s book. First of all, it leaves out much of the story of the origin of computers. Many important makers and vendors of 20th-century computing equipment were quite outside the office-machine industry. This includes academic and commercial makers of differential analyzers, government agencies such as the National Bureau of Standards, and some electronic com­ puter manufacturers, such as Engineering Research Associates, EckertMauchly Computer Company, General Electric, and Consolidated Elec­ trodynamics Corporation. I mention the last four firms because the computer-related portions of all of them were eventually acquired by business-equipment manufacturers. The disjuncture between sophis­ ticated developments in computing and changes in office machines also is apparent if one considers office-equipment companies such as Burroughs and IBM. These manufacturers initially saw electronic computers as more of a diversion from than a contribution to their traditional business. Undoubtedly, Cortada will explore the melding of the diverse traditions that went into the computer industry in his later work. Second, readers should also be aware that errors in detail mar Cortada’s text. For example, the date of Dorr E. Felt’s first important patent is given as both 1888 (p. 36) and 1887 (p. 40). The date of introduction of the Comptometer manufactured on the basis of this patent is given as 1890 (p. 40), although discussion of Comptometers appeared at least as early as 1888. Pinwheel calculating machines were first introduced not only by W. T. Odhner in Russia, as Cortada says on page 41, but at the same time by Frank S. Baldwin in the United States. Along the same lines, Cortada refers to adding machines built by Monroe Calculating Machine Company...