Who Initiated the Computer Age?

Abstract

Histories of computer age usually trace its origins to massive military data processing requirements that arose during World War II. The same histories also maintain that electronic digital computer represented product of unique alliance between universities and military in which former supplied brainpower and latter specifications and, significantly, capital to produce what arguably became most important technology to emerge in industrial West since steam engine. Only fleetingly does private business sector enter into story of origins of so-called third industrial revolution. Indeed, one writer holds that from World War II well into 1950s, development funds for giant steps of advancement that computer required exceeded by far capacities of industry, of universities, and of private foundations. Without financial support of government-particularly military--agencies, he concludes, we may be certain that pace of development would have been much slower. I James W. Cortada's Before Computer conveys different message. While acknowledging seminal technological breakthroughs in electronic computation that occurred during World War II, he nonetheless maintains that scholars have fundamentally misinterpreted their history because they have neglected larger context in which new technology developed. According to Cortada, wartime users of data processing equipment relied almost exclusively on older electromechanical devices (calculators, punched card tabulators, bookkeeping machines, adding machines) to meet their needs. Indeed, he asserts that the first functioning electronic digital computer (ENIAC) was a minor event compared to huge burden borne during war years by more traditional data processing technologies (p. 189). Instead he emphasizes idea of incremental innovation. Adopting George Basalla's thesis that technological innovation proceeds in evolutionary increments rather than great leaps,2 Cortada holds that the computer and its