The Organizational Aesthetic: Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock

Abstract

The Organizational Aesthetic:Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock Brian Rajski, Independent Scholar (bio) But if it is said that a writing man cannot write well about business, except to attack and ridicule it, because he is a leftist, I would say that it is quite as likely that he is a leftist because he cannot write about business. Henry Luce, "The Profit Motive" Calculated Metaphors Near the beginning of Kenneth Fearing's corporate thriller The Big Clock (1946), George Stroud, an employee of Janoth Enterprises, meets "a titan in the world of mathematics; he had connected a number of adding machines into a single unit, and this super-calculator was the biggest in the world. It could solve equations unknown to and beyond the grasp of its inventor" (5). This description of the mathematician and his "super-calculator" situates Fearing's genre novel near the end of a lively decade of experimentation with calculating machines that culminated in the mainframe computer and the emergence of the computer age.1 The introduction of computing machines would not leave untouched mechanical metaphors such as the "big clock" of the novel's title, and would inflect the image of organizations as bureaucratic machines. Over a decade earlier, in 1933, Wallace J. Eckert, with the aid of IBM, had developed a "calculation control switch" to link different IBM punched card accounting machines. The basic arithmetic function of each accounting machine, when combined into an automated sequence, allowed Eckert's punched card "system" to swiftly perform complex calculations (Bashe et.al. 22-23). While working at the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University [End Page 113] in subsequent years, Eckert continued to develop punched card systems and published his influential Punched Card Methods in Scientific Computing (1940), considered by some to be the first computer book.2 In 1938, Howard Aiken, who was familiar with Eckert's work, proposed to IBM to build an "automatic calculating machine" using IBM punched card and accounting equipment and a specially developed paper tape control mechanism.3 Like Eckert's system, Aiken's proposed machine aimed to use a general sequence control to combine the arithmetic functions of accounting machines into a complex calculation. One of the officials involved originally wished to call the machine a "super calculator," but it eventually became known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) / Harvard Mark I (Cohen 160). Contrary to Aiken's original specifications, the ASCC/Mark I required heavy engineering modifications of IBM equipment to be completed, and was one of the first monstrously-sized "mainframes" (Fig. 1) Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Howard Aiken and IBM's ASCC/Mark I. Photo. Courtesy of IBM Archives. Due to other war-time priorities, the machine was slowly finished and was not dedicated until the middle of 1944; when revealed, it was dubbed in the press as the "world's greatest mathematical calculator" (249). Although the ASCC/Mark I was electromechanical, that is to [End Page 114] say, relied partially on mechanical movements, it could be programmed to perform different calculations using a paper tape sequence control, which orchestrated the machine's arithmetic functions, making it a strong competitor for being the first computer. However, the machine lacked conditional branching (the ability to follow different program paths according to the results obtained as the calculation proceeded): it was flexible about which program it would run, but once a program was running, it was largely inflexible in operation.4 In early 1946, the same year as Fearing's novel was published, J. Presper Eckert (no relation to Wallace J. Eckert) and John Mauchly, along with other members of the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, acquired celebrity status when the dedication of their Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) introduced the results of war-time computing research to the public. While completely electronic and therefore far faster than Wallace Eckert's punched card system and Aiken's ASCC/Mark I, the ENIAC, too, resembled the "super-calculator" in Fearing's novel; the ENIAC, as one computer historian has noted, could best be "described as a collection of electronic adding machines and other arithmetic...