DDRIG: Control Data: American Power and the Global Assembly Line 1957-1992

本研究探讨全球供应链作为一个历史的社会政治模型，为高科技产品的制造，如磁盘组，集成电路，打印机和终端，出现在响应美国的产业政策在20世纪的下半叶。该项目旨在通过为最近对全球化，技术贸易和购买美国货运动的关注提供关键的历史背景来提高公众意识。此外，它还谈到了这种贸易的地缘政治和社会经济利益，帮助我们了解全球化供应分配何时起作用--何时不起作用--以及对谁有利。该项目借鉴了对商业和州政府档案的广泛研究，以及对前科技工作者的口述历史，探讨了美国一家主要公司--控制数据公司（Control Data Corporation）全球供应链的创建。美国国防承包商、IBM的竞争对手控制数据公司生产了20世纪世纪最快、最强大的超级计算机。然而，面对美国国防部用于研发（R D）的资金减少，该公司在20世纪60年代初开始将其制造业务全球化。这条全球装配线将制造业分为研发、营销、装配和零部件生产等阶段，并将这些阶段战略性地分布在世界各地，从肯塔基州东部到罗马尼亚再到韩国。重组生产降低了基础制造业的成本，使高管们能够在整个公司重新分配储蓄，并在国际贸易中利用美元的强势。与此同时，这种生产模式通过重新安排在冷战高峰时期形成的各种联邦机构（国防部、国务院、劳工部等）的公私伙伴关系，帮助美国在海外的权力。这项研究不仅着眼于公司代表和政府官员在建立高科技供应链模式方面的相互作用，而且还突出了商人和官员招募数千名妇女进入公司全球电子组装业务的前景。总的来说，该项目表明，到20世纪90年代初苏联解体和控制数据结束时，在计算机行业，一个世界的贸易已经进行了三十年，这是一种有自己的社会和战略贸易的安排，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

This research investigates global supply chains as a historical socio-political model for the manufacture of high-technology products—such as disk packs, integrated circuits, printers, and terminals—that emerged in response to US industrial policy during the second half of the twentieth century. The project aims to enhance public awareness by providing critical historical context for recent concerns over globalization, technology trade, and the Buy American movement. It, furthermore, speaks to the geopolitical and socio-economic stakes of such trade, helping us understand when globalized supply distribution works—and doesn’t—and for whom.Drawing on extensive research in business and state government archives as well as oral histories with former tech workers, the project explores the creation of a global supply chain at one major US-based firm—Control Data Corporation. Control Data, US Defense contractor and rival of IBM, produced some of the fastest and most powerful supercomputers of the twentieth century. Facing a decline in US Defense Department funding for research and development (R&D), however, the company began globalizing its manufacturing operations in the early 1960s. This global assembly line broke manufacturing into phases—R&D, marketing, assembly, and the production of parts and components—and strategically placed these phases around the world, from eastern Kentucky to Romania to South Korea. Reorganizing production lowered the costs of basic manufacturing, allowing executives to redistribute savings across the firm and take advantage of the dollar’s strength in international trade. At the same time, this production model assisted US power abroad by reordering public-private partnerships forged at the height of the Cold War across various federal agencies (Defense, State, Labor, etc.). The research zeros in on not only the interplay between company representatives and government officials in making the supply chain model in high-tech, but also foregrounds businessmen and bureaucrats’ enlisting thousands of women into the company’s global electronic assembly operations. Overall, the project demonstrates that, by the time the Soviet Union collapsed and Control Data wound down in the early 1990s, one-world trade had been well underway for three decades in the computer industry—an arrangement with its own social and strategic trade-offs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.