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Part 2 Precontext to the Internet

In this section of the memex, we will explore the technological developments that laid the foundation for the creation of the internet. Before the internet came into existence, there were several key innovations that enabled the sharing and dissemination of information on a large scale.

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February 13th Telegraphy

  • tech exists as assemblages Assemblage Theory
  • assemblages can be thought of as complex systems Comicated vs Complex Theory
  • in the right conditions, complex systems can evolve
  • What are the right conditions, why did the electric telegraph win out
    • How did it teach us about networks powered by electricity
  • Brian Winston - Historiography
    • Historical Theory
  • Telegraphy - What are some of the 'competences' required for it
  • 17 c, idea of magentic need to pick out messages and a relationship with static electricity already well mooted
  • Before optical telegraph, Chappe brothers had experimented with static to move an indicator, found difficult (end of 18 c)
  • Optical telegraph ??
    • Ralph Wedgewood 1814
    • Francis Ronald 1816
      • Admiralty says no
  • Electric signalling systems for controlling railroads

February 15th Extending the Telegraphy

[[Railroad safety]] [[Other electrico-mechanical devices]]

  • Abbé Caselli invents a device in 1862 to transmit daguerreotypes of sender's handwriting (sets up shop with support of Napoleon III)
  • Elisha Gray (subsequent of telephone-competitor-to-Bell fame) makes a device featuring styluses at either end of the line to write and copy someone's document

    • Why did the fax machine fail in the mid 19th century? Per winston, no supervening social necessity.

    Morse code [[International Telegraphy]] [[Gutta-Percha]]

    February 27th Telephone

    [[Gray versus Bell]] [[Telephone necessity]]

    March 1st Information Theory

    Different networks by end of 19th century

    March 6th Necessities for Digital Computers

    • Digital, Electronic Computers: Competences & Social Necessities
    • Entscheidunsproblem
    • The turing machine
    • Combine information Theory with Turings 'Universal Computer'
      • you have a way for a machine computer to simulate any of the work a human computer could do.
    • John von Neumann
      • Mathematician
        • Involved in Manhattan Project
      • Connects switches/bits/information and cognition
      • Mechanemorphism
      • Alot of 'Electronic brains' in media
    • Turing knew of Babbage work
      • Paid hommage to his universal language in his work
    • presages the work of Nauckly, Zuse, Aitken
    • Social necessity?
      • George Szheutz builds Babbage difference Engine in 1844, making copies of it in 1855
    • Parallel 'computing' devices - analogue simulators
      • Kelvin's tide calculator proposed in 1876
      • mechanisms to achieve this not developed until 1920 by Vannevar Bush
    • Bell Model 2
    • IBM 600 could do simple math
    • Businesses and Academics had sophisticated machines but their wasn't a real market for machines that could alter it's own program
    • Social Necessity - Edwin Black argues IBM helped the holocaust by selling tabulators and counting machines to germany
    • George Stibitz (Bell Labs) - 1937
    • Leondardo Torres y Quevedo - 1915
      • suggests using telephone switches to control the operation of his mechanical calculator
    • Stibitz - 1937 uses telephone relays over a weekend to wire a simple logic cirucit to perform binary addition - wins him some funding to build first complex calculator, the Model 1 - finished by 1940
    • Konrad Zuse - 1936
      • starts building electro-mechanical binary calculators from telephone parts
      • Z3
    • Howard Aitken
      • prof at Harvard
      • Designed his own electro-mechanical calculator to help with his thesis work; proposes the machine to the military in 1937; military engineer introduces Aitken to IBM & Thomas Watson (president)
      • Watson was salesman who turned Hollerith's company into a juggernaut
      • Mark I
    • Existing 'social necessity' good enough for electro-mechanical calculators, not enough for all-purpose general computers
    • Ballistics
    • Industrialized for war over the 19th century - new types of guns
      • Reverend Francis Bashforth, 1864-1880, new types of firepower
      • US Military in the aftermath establishes tables for different kinds of guns
      • Created a machine called ENIAC for calculating ballistics
    • Mauchly & ENIAC
    • Electroc Numerical Integrator and Caulcator/Computer
    • WHO did the programming
    • HOW LONG did it take to set the program up
    • computers were girls!!
    • Programming - Competences
    • The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Bobbage
    • Grace Hopper
      • Worked for Aiken
      • Used bug to indicate something wrong in machinery
    • ENIAC SIX
      • Females did the tedious calculations that coded everything
    • The secret history of the ENIAC WOMEN

    March 8th Computational Incunabula

    Oldest known cave painting First source of light obsidian-memex/docs/index First source of light (200,000 Years ago)