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When Computers Were Human

by David Alan Grier

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942285,520 (3.94)3
Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.… (more)
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I once looked up "computer" in a 1937 dictionary and read "one who computes". This book is a nice, if dry, history about those who computed in the days before digital took over...astronomy, navigation, ballistics, weather, census...the math tables are mind boggling, and I used many (Chemical Rubber Company anyone?)

I had a little nostalgia in the last chapter...Grier talked about two mainframes that marked the definite end to human computing - the IBM 360 and UNIVAC 1108 - both of which I wrote assembly language code for. I still remember that the UNIVC had 36 bit words. ( )
  Razinha | May 23, 2017 |
Once upon a time, "computer" was a job description, rather than a machine. That much I knew, and that most "computers" were women. Grier, himself a mathematician became interested in the subject when his grandmother offhandedly mentioned "you know, I took calculus once" - unfortunately he didn't realize until later just how remarkable that statement was for a woman of her age.

Grier talks about how the tedium of numerical analysis done by hand and the need for jobs during the Great Depression conspired to create the Mathematical Tables project - a WPA-funded project of teams of mostly women, doing simple, repetitive calculations all day long. Mathematicans broke down complex calculations into small pieces which were doled out according to difficulty (most people only performed additions, a rare few did divisions) and used to compile massive tables of useful numbers for use by scientists and engineers. He follows the history of "computers" up through World War II, where the overarching computations that computers worked on were highly classified, with individuals being forbidden from talking even to each other about what they were doing while adding or multiplying numbers that together solved complicated equations for nuclear physics and explosion mechanisms. The book concludes with the development of electronic computers and the obsolescence of human "computers", and speculates about whether computer programming will be similarly obsolete in another two generations. ( )
1 vote lorax | Aug 15, 2014 |
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Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.

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