Petri Paju

National Projects and International Users: Finland and Early European Computerization

By the time the first operational electronic digital computer was installed in Helsinki in 1958, Finlands computerization was already far advanced. The Finnish experience helps illustrate the spread of computing technology in Northern Europe. In Finlands case, it occurred through a combination of national goals and internationally acquired technology and expertise.

The Wegematic 1000 Computing Center, 1959–1964

The paper concerns the Alwac and Wegematic computer usage in the Nordic countries focussing on the Southern Finnish town of Turku. This topic has received little academic attention and frequently forgotten. In the paper, we examine the actions that the two universities and involved companies in the Turku region took after they had accepted the donation of a Wegematic 1000 computer. We argue that the Turku Computing Centre, created in 1960, firstly made an effort to combine scientific and educational aspects and commercial service in its activity and, secondly, participated in and benefited from establishing Nordic co-operation among the users of Wegematic computers. Therefore, we conclude that this Wegematic story is important for understanding the early phases of computerisation in Finland, at least outside the capital region of the country. We suggest the same could be true in Sweden and Norway. Further, we suggest that other Wegematic stories might be worth studying to improve our understanding of the Nordic trans-local interaction in early computing. Finally, we suggest applying a comparative method for these future studies.

A Failure Revisited: The First Finnish Computer Construction Project

In this article, the first Finnish computer construction, previously claimed to have produced only an out-dated machine, is studied as an integral part of an attempt to establish a national computer center in Finland. I argue that the aim of the Finnish Committee for Mathematical Machines (1954–1960) was more similar to its Swedish and Danish counterparts than has been recognized, even though the Finnish Committee decided to duplicate a German Gla computer in 1954. The similarity with Sweden and Denmark arises from the aim of the Committee to establish a national computing center, like the ones in Stockholm and Copenhagen, in Helsinki during its first two years. Furthermore, this plan for the national computing center, or the building of a single computer, the ESKO, did not gain the support it needed either from the state nor the former punched card machine users, because of the politically and economically difficult situation in post-war Finnish society. In the uncertain economic year of 1956, the Finnish punched card customers of IBM decided to continue collaborating with IBM alone. Moreover, IBM also benefited by receiving expert work force educated in the Committee’s computer construction project. Hopefully this Finnish case, being unsuccessful and therefore unlike other Scandinavian countries, can also assist in further comprehending the preconditions that lead to more successful developments like those in Sweden and Denmark.

Computer Industry as a National Task

This article studies a forgotten research project of recent Finnish his- tory of information technology by the name of Suomalainen tietokonepro- jekti, in English The Finnish Computer Project (FICO). The FICO project was a government-sponsored research project initially aimed at producing a Finnish (mini) computer for international markets, especially in socialist coun- tries. Researchers carried out the project in 1975-1976. However, after the re- searchers had produced their preliminary study report in six months time, the project was not continued. I argue that historians have misrepresented the FICO project in recent research and when properly studied, the project can offer new perspectives to an early development phase of present-like science and technol- ogy policy in Finland. Notwithstanding FICOs topicality, this article focuses on examining what the involved people meant by the national task of the pro- ject. I further argue that we can best understand FICO as a continuation of ear- lier ideas on building high technology, in this case electronics and computers, capabilities and expertise as a Finnish national project. Moreover, focusing on these distinct national projections in action might offer one key to understand- ing similar attempts at national projects in other countries as well.

IBM Manufacturing in the Nordic Countries

Unlike other foreign computing companies, in addition to sales and service IBM early on also established production facilities in the Nordic countries. To provide a better understanding of the role of IBM in these countries, the article surveys IBM manufacturing in the region: what was produced, and where were these functions located? The term “production” is understood in a rather narrow sense, as manufacture. The results show that for several decades, IBM produced punched cards in four Nordic countries, but that after 1960 there has been only one IBM factory for hardware in the region, located in the Stockholm area. The article also discusses the reasons for Sweden’s importance in IBM manufacture, and suggests that Nordic companies contributed to IBM manufacture through subcontracting.

Text Mining and Qualitative Analysis of an IT History Interview Collection

In this paper, we explore the possibility of applying a text mining method on a large qualitative source material concerning the history of information technology in one nation. This data was collected in the Swedish documentation project “From Computing Machines to IT.” We apply text mining on the interview transcripts of this Swedish documentation project. Specifically, we seek to group the interviews according to their central themes and affinities and pinpoint the most relevant interviews for specific research questions. In addition, we search for interpersonal links between the interviews. We apply a method called the “self-organizing map” that can be used to create a similarity diagram of the interviews. We then discuss the results in several contexts including the possible future uses of text mining in researching history.