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IEEE Annals of the History of Computing | 1996

From digital to analog and back: the ideology of intelligent machines in the history of the electrical analyzer, 1870s-1960s

Aristotle Tympas

The example of the electrical analyzer, a genre of computing artifacts known mainly by their development and use in the context of electrification, is treated as representative of the historical oscillation between analog and digital computing orientations. Artificial electric lines, short-circuit calculating boards, and alternating current network analyzers are discussed as examples of electrical analyzers. Counting on the successful employment of the ideology of intelligent machines in the context of the history of the electrical analyzer, the first part of the article searches for a direct ancestor of the post-World War II computing ideology. The second part of the article proposes to interpret the ideology of intelligent machines as an effect related to the social conditions of the appropriation of computing labor. Overall, the article argues about the historical, i.e., antiessentialist, character of the demarcation of digital from analog orientation.


International Review of Social History | 2003

Perpetually Laborious: Computing Electric Power Transmission Before The Electronic Computer

Aristotle Tympas

Placing Thomas Edison at the beginning of a history on electric power transmission hardly needs justification. Thomas Edisons abundant supply of pictures of himself as an inventive genius – and Americas pressing demand for a myth of an ingenious inventor – combined to bestow a “Eureka” moment upon Edisons pioneering Pearl Street (New York) Station electric lighting network. But the history of the laborious computations that took place at Menlo Park and the division-of-computing labor of which Edison took advantage suggests a different view of inventive genius. The story of the computational pyramid formed by the labors of Francis R. Upton, Charles L. Clarke, and Samuel D. Mott (1879–1880) can be reconstructed from the existing literature. In his reminiscences from Menlo Park, Edisons employee, Francis Jehl, detailed how Edison thought of constructing a miniaturized network to be used as a computer of the actual network. Knowing that constructing, maintaining, and using the miniature network required a considerable amount of skilled labor, Edison decided to hire an employee for it, Dr Herman Claudius. Edison enthusiastically welcomed Claudius to perform a type of computing work “requiring nerve and super abundance of patience and knowledge”. Jehl remembered that the labor of constructing a miniature network of conductors, “all in proportion, to show Mr Edison what he would have to install in New York City in connection with the Pearl Street Station” was “gigantic”. Following the pattern of the Pearl Street Station electric lighting network, several similar networks were built in the early 1880s. In response, Edisons labor pyramid was enlarged by giving Claudius an assistant, Hermann Lemp, who performed the monotonous task of constructing the new miniature networks, which Edison needed for computation. Inconvenient as it might be for those who assume that technological change is the product of inventive genius, electrification was, from the beginning, laboriously computed; it was not, like Athena, a deity that leapt from a godly head.


Korean Journal of Audiology | 2018

Examination of Previously Published Data to Identify Patterns in the Social Representation of ‘Hearing Aids’ Across Countries

Vinaya Manchaiah; Pierre Ratinaud; Aristotle Tympas; Berth Danermark; Per Germundsson

Background and Objectives Societal factors seem to exercise a strong influence on hearing aid uptake, use, and satisfaction. In particular, knowledge, perception, and attitude of people will have bearing towards their and others health behavior and decisions. The current study aimed at understanding the perception of hearing aids by adults belonging to the general population in different countries. Subjects and Methods The study employed a crosssectional design. A sample of 404 adults from India, Iran, Portugal, and the United Kingdom were recruited by relying on a convenience sampling. Previously published data was re-analyzed but it was applied for different approach. Free association task was used to collect the data. They were asked to provide up to five words or phrases that come to mind when thinking about “hearing aids.” The data was initially analyzed based on qualitative content analysis. This was followed by quantitative cluster analysis and chi square analysis. Results The content analysis suggested 39 main categories of responses related to hearing aids. The cluster analysis resulted in five main clusters, namely: 1) positive attitude, 2) external factors, 3) hearing aid use and satisfaction, 4) etiology, and 5) benefits and limitations of technology. A few demographic factors (i.e., education, occupation type, country) showed association with different clusters, although country of origin seemed to be associated with most clusters. Conclusions The study provides us with unique insights into the perception of hearing aids by the general public, and additionally, the way demographic variables may influence these perceptions.


Archive | 2017

Lightning Calculations Lightened

Aristotle Tympas

This chapter supplements the overview of the history of the slide rule of the preceding chapter by detailed histories of discussions concerning the slide rule in a key context of use, that of energy-related calculations. It starts with an introduction to the multitude of classes of slide rules that were used in this context (Sect. 3.2) before moving on to focus on discussions of relevance to the mechanical era, through research based on the journal Power (Sect. 3.3), and the electrical era, through research on a set of journals that included the General ElectricReview (Sect. 3.4). Considering that the use of the slide rule for electricity-related calculations was especially wide, the chapter refers to it in order to elaborate on some of the issues raised in the preceding chapter: the presentation of the slide rule as intelligent and therefore universal computing artifact, the advance of an argument that attributed accuracy to skillful social use (and training to such use) rather than to some inherent technical advantage, and the refusal to consider accuracy independently from a broader set of variables, of which the most central was the cost (these are recurring issues in Sects. 3.4.1, 3.4.2, 3.4.3, and 3.4.4).


Archive | 2017

The Appearance of a Neatly Finished Box

Aristotle Tympas

The history of computing before the electronic era is frequently reduced to the history of calculating and tabulating machines, which are a posteriori designated it as digital and therefore qualify to be considered direct ancestors of our electronic computer. As I perceive it, we face a two-dimensional historiographical challenge. We have to check if it is correct to privilege the history of computing with calculating and tabulating machines when it comes to the mechanical and the electrical eras. At the same time, we have to explain why computing with calculating and tabulating machines emerged as the privileged ancestor of electronic computing. The understudied history of the comparatively limited use of calculating and tabulating machines in engineering offers a contrast that is worth considering when it comes to address the aforementioned challenge. More specifically, in response to the first dimension of the aforementioned challenge, I will in this chapter present evidence that suggests that calculating and tabulating machines were not as important in engineering as we would expect based on the canonical emphasis on these machines as inherently technically superior. On the other hand, in response to the second dimension of this historiographical challenge, I will present evidence that shows that, in comparison to other computing artifacts of the 1914 Exhibition (e.g., in comparison to slide rules), calculating machines were more compatible with the pursuit of the further advancement of the capitalist division-of-computing labor.


Archive | 2017

The Delights of the Slide Rule

Aristotle Tympas

The centuries-long and widespread use of the slide rule qualifies it as one of the most important computing artifacts of historical capitalism to date. Yet, the literature on the history of computing with the slide rule is extremely limited. This chapter offers an introduction to the history of the slide rule based on the presentation of the slide rule in engineering and other technical texts. The emphasis is placed on retrieving and interpreting representative comparisons between the various versions of slide rules and between slide rules and other computing artifacts, mostly calculating machines (mechanical calculators).


Archive | 2017

“Like the Poor, the Harmonics Will Always Be with Us”

Aristotle Tympas

From the perspective of the degree of mechanization (machine to human capital, constant to variable capital), some of the machines presented in this chapter should be placed at the one end of the spectrum of technologies of calculation-computation of the mechanical and electrical eras, whereas some of the graphs presented in Chap. 5 should be placed at the other. The calculating machines (mechanical calculators) presented in Chap. 6 and the slide rules presented in Chaps. 2 and 3 would fill the space in between. If we had to choose one name to refer to the great variety of the machines and associated mechanisms of this chapter, this would have to be “analyzer.”


Archive | 2017

The Inner Satisfaction That Comes with Each Use of the Alignment Chart

Aristotle Tympas

Calculating tables and graphs, the two classes of calculating artifacts covered in this chapter, exemplify a mode of computing that seems to have been as little (if at all) mechanical as possible. They are treated together for an additional reason: tables were usually generated from graphs and vice versa. In many cases, the two were also used complementary. The construction and use of calculating tables and graphs could actually involve several other calculating artifacts, from slide rules to ones that exemplified the highest degree of mechanization (some versions of analyzers). In some cases, tables and graphs were used as components of an expensive standard or unique calculating artifact; in others, expensive calculating artifacts had been used to generate a table or a graph. The process could start from empirical data, collected at the interface of engineering or other encounter with nature, or, from the other end, plans to change nature according to laboratory rehearsals.


Archive | 2015

On the Hazardousness of the Concept ‘Technology’: Notes on a Conversation Between the History of Science and the History of Technology

Aristotle Tympas

Historians of science and historians of technology have recently turned their attention to the conceptual history of ‘applied science’ and ‘technology’ respectively. ‘Technology’ was a concept introduced in the nineteenth century as concerning both ‘applied science’ and ‘industrial arts.’ A developed version of this concept caught on after the first decades of the twentieth century, following the establishment of technological networks and the rise of ‘Fordism,’ ‘Taylorism’ and ‘technocracy.’ Based on interpretations of the nineteenth-century circuit of the steam engine and the twentieth-century network of electric power, this chapter brings together observations from the history of science, the history of technology and the critique of classic political economy to elaborate on the suggestion that ‘technology’ has been a ‘hazardous’ concept. Central to the argument of the chapter is the retrieval of a correspondence between the conceptual couples ‘technology’-‘technics’ and ‘surplus value’-‘value.’


Archive | 2013

Border-Crossing Electrons: Critical Energy Flows to and from Greece

Aristotle Tympas; Stathis Arapostathis; Katerina Vlantoni; Yiannis Garyfallos

“Dance of the Richters/’ read the title of a half-page article in the May 12, 1995 issue of the popular Greek newspaper Nea (News). “There have been 30 earthquakes of over 4 on the Richter scale in the last 40 days in many areas of Greece… the intense seismic activity of recent days has caused uneasiness, but the seismologists reassure us that it is not an unusual phenomenon and that there is no risk.”1 The earthquake that hit Greece the following day was unusual on many levels. Makedonia (Macedonia), the newspaper with the largest circulation in Northern Greece, called it “a major geological surprise.”2 The 6.6 Richter quake had its epicenter at one of the few areas in Greece that was not considered seismo-genic, near the city of Kozani. This was the largest city in the western part of the Greek region of Macedonia.3

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Vasilis Galis

IT University of Copenhagen

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