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

这项研究调查了全球供应链作为制造高科技产品的历史社会政治模式--如磁盘组、集成电路、打印机和终端--这些产品是在20世纪下半叶美国工业政策的回应下出现的。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，它还谈到了此类贸易的地缘政治和社会经济利害关系，帮助我们了解全球化的供应分配何时有效-以及对谁无效。该项目基于对商业和州政府档案的广泛研究以及对前技术工人的口述历史，探索了在一家总部位于美国的大型公司-控制数据公司-创建全球供应链。控制数据公司是美国国防承包商，也是IBM的竞争对手，它生产出了20世纪一些速度最快、功能最强大的超级计算机。然而，面对美国国防部研发(R&A；D)资金的减少，该公司在20世纪60年代初开始全球化其制造业务。这条全球装配线将制造分为几个阶段--研发、营销、组装和零部件生产--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的成本，使高管能够在整个公司重新分配节省的资金，并利用美元在国际贸易中的强势。与此同时，这种生产模式通过重新安排在冷战高峰期建立的跨联邦机构(国防部、国务院、劳工部等)的公私伙伴关系，帮助美国在海外的实力。这项研究不仅聚焦于公司代表和政府官员在构建高科技供应链模式方面的互动，还聚焦于商人和官僚招募数千名女性参与该公司的全球电子组装业务。总体而言，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，单一世界贸易在计算机行业已经顺利进行了30年-这是一种有其自身的社会和战略权衡的安排。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.