Abstract
Today, modern computers are based on digital technology. Information is represented as bits and bytes, sequences of binary 1s and 0s. Fundamental to the technology is the idea of on and off, of true and false. So fundamental is this concept of discrete (or digital) state, that it is difficult to imagine how computers could be non-digital, or even if non-digital computers would be computers. This book addresses the history of a different kind of computer technology: one commonly known as ‘analogue computing’. Once a common alternative to the now-dominant digital computer, analogue technology was used for a whole variety of calculating and modelling applications.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Bush (1936) p. 649.
- 3.
- 4.
Small (2001). For the traditional pre-war account see either Bromley (1990) or Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (1996). Recognition of post-war analogue begins with the work of Bromley (1983) and Aspray (1993). Further scholarship includes Edwards (1996), Small (2001), Mindell (2002). Interestingly, there is still some controversy about the relative emphasis that historians should place on the two categories. For example, when a recent historical encyclopedia on scientific instruments (Bud and Warner 1998) devoted approximately equal space to analogue and digital computers, reviewer Field (2000) argued that it was ‘absurd’ to give such prominence to a class of ‘disparate devices that set up simulations… [and] ceased to be used in the 1960s.’ Clearly Field has a point. However, the key challenge for history is to see past the barriers of these classifications and to situate analogue computing within its wider heritage, showing how modern (digital) computing is in many ways the result of a consolidation of these two approaches that in the 1960s were considered separate. The major recent studies re-visiting analogue history are Small (1994, 2001) who investigated the electronic analogue computers that replaced the differential analyser, Tympas (1996, 2003) who looked at the history of the network analysers from the perspective of computing labour; and Mindell (2002) who offered interesting perspectives as part of his account of the history of control and cybernetics.
- 5.
This is discussed in Sect. 3.3.1, pp. 64–72, below.
- 6.
A good example is found in a 1959 textbook by Walter Karplus and Walter Soroka. They draw a distinction between ‘finite-difference networks’ (analogues based on electrical networks of resistors) and ‘continuous field analogs’ (such as an electrolytic tank, or a conductive paper analogue). See Karplus and Soroka (1959), p. ix.
- 7.
Philbrick (1961), p. 1. Philbrick also highlighted the philosophical concern of the example where a first differential of an analogue (so continuous) function would be considered discontinuous (so not analogue) by the mathematician. However, when analogue computers differentiated functions, they clearly did not convert from analogue to digital. Philbrick was emphasising that pursing an academic definition of analogue computing based solely on technical characteristic is not a fruitful way to understand these machines.
- 8.
- 9.
Fifer (1961) pp. 2–3.
- 10.
See Chap. 2, p. 47 note 85, below.
- 11.
MacKay (1951) pp. 1.4–1.5.
- 12.
Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (1996) p. 60, Small (2001) pp. 6–8. Similarly, in introducing the analogue–digital classification, Historian David Clark wrote that: ‘There are two versions of this distinction… Firstly there is a distinction to be made between computation by modelling, and calculating by the formal manipulation of tokens and symbols. Secondly, is the distinction drawn between representing quantities by the measure of some analogous substance or physical state, and representation by number symbols’ (Clark 2002, p. 79).
- 13.
It should be noted that whilst a narrative of modelling captures many analogue devices, for others such as planimeters and gun directors it does not. The inclusion of these in the history of analogue computing is generally a result of their importance as prior-technologies of the differential analyser. Thus, the themes of modelling and calculation should be explored together, an approach taken in Chap. 2.
- 14.
See Campbell-Kelly and Aspray (1996) pp. 60–63.
- 15.
Anon. (1954) p. 995.
- 16.
EMI (1955–1965).
- 17.
Mahoney (2005) pp. 107–108.
- 18.
Mindell (2002) p. 10.
- 19.
- 20.
William Aspray wrote that ‘the computer almost transformed meteorology’ (Aspray 1990b, p. 152), and when Frederik Nebeker wrote a history of meteorology, he presented the stored program digital computer as a unifier of three previously separate meteorological traditions (Nebeker 1995, p. 2). Following Nebeker, Dahan Dalmedico (2001) wrote that the unification of the three themes ‘hinged mainly on the new availability of fast computing machines’ (p. 397). In contrast, Agar (1997) suggests that this view is a return to success-oriented history, effectively downplaying the role of non-digital computing.
- 21.
See Bromley (1990) p. 157 and Small (2001) pp. 30–31. It should be highlighted at the outset that while the direct–indirect distinction has proved useful, it is possible that in different applications, the same machine might be interpreted as both indirect and direct. The MIT network analyser is a good example: this machine began as a generic tool for modelling power networks (a computation based on ‘direct’ analogy) and was later interpreted as a tool for solving systems of differential equations (a computation based on an ‘indirect’ mathematical representation). This problem derives from a variance in use.
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Care, C. (2010). Introduction: Analogue Computers in the History of Computing. In: Technology for Modelling. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-948-0_1
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