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Highlighting the diverse and fragmentary nature of the so-called “digital turn,” this volume offers a glimpse into the landscape of different computing cultures.

Computing Cultures

Knowledges and Practices (1940–1990)

Highlighting the diverse and fragmentary nature of the so-called “digital turn,” this volume offers a glimpse into the landscape of different computing cultures which emerged side by side between the 1940s and the 1990s, at times sharing some features, yet remaining essentially independent from each other. Some of these cultures disappeared, some thrive until today, but understanding all through their knowledges and practices, interconnections and broader historical context, is essential to deal critically with the visions and dreams, fears and tensions characterizing digital practices in today’s knowledge societies.

 

Contents

Introduction 7
Arianna Borrelli and Helena Durnová

[ 1 ] Synthetic Machines and Practical Languages: Masking the Computer in the 1950s 27
Mark Priestley

[ 2 ] Practical and Theoretical Objectives of Early Machine Translation in the 1950–60s 61
Jacqueline Léon

[ 3 ] Big Machines for Big Science: The Beginnings of Scientific Computing at CERN 83
Arianna Borrelli

[ 4 ] The Influence of Organization and Methods on Early Business Computing 121
Elisabetta Mori

[ 5 ] The Division of Mental Labor in Computing Practices: Presuppositions, Advances, Biases 147
Marie-José Durand-Richard

[ 6 ] Mainframe Computer or Programmable Pocket Calculator? Calculation Tools and Practices of Computing in Medieval History (1960s–1980s) 193
Edgar Lejeune

[ 7 ] Computing Practices, Data-Based Design, and Knowledge Cultures During the Post-War Period 227
Nathalie Bredella

[ 8 ] Tense and Temporality: Computing and the Logic of Time 255
Troy Kaighin Astarte

Authors 281

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Publishing Year
2025
Language
English
Pages
284
License
CC-BY-SA 4.0
ISBNs
978-3-95796-273-7 (Print)
978-3-95796-274-4 (PDF)
DOI
10.14619/2737
Available as
print, pdf

The Editors

Arianna Borrelli is a historian and philosopher of natural philosophy and modern science working at the Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg “Cultures of Research,” RWTH Aachen, where her research focuses on reconstructing the variety of cultures of computer-aided research. She has a special interest for the interplay of scientific knowing and the tools mediating it and has worked on medieval mathematical cosmology, early modern meteorology and mechanics, as well as quantum theories from their early days up to the present. She is currently President of the DHST/DLMPST Commission for History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC) and her recent publications include: A. Hocquet, F. Wieber, G. Gramelsberger, A. Borrelli et al. 2024. Software in science is ubiquitous yet overlooked. Nature Computational Science 4: 465–8; A. Borrelli. 2023. Aristotelianism, Chymistry and Mechanics in Early Seventeenth-century Europe. In: D. Verardi (ed.). Aristotelianism and Magic in Early Modern Europe, Bloomsbury, 105–44.

Arianna Borrelli's Author Profile

Helena Durnová teaches history of mathematics and computing as well as a course on history of science and technology at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. She has written on history of computing in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s, including early programming practices there. She is interested in the intimate connections at the intersection of computing, mathematics, and language. She is also working on history of mathematics education in Czechoslovakia and together with Petra Antošová, Danny Beckers, Snezana Lawrence, is preparing the book A History of Mathematics Education in Czechoslovakia. Ideologies and Practices. to be published in the Springer series History of Mathematics Education.

Helena Durnová's Author Profile